This excursion will be back soon. In the meantime we’d be happy to organise a private tour for you. Please contact us on 020 7624 3978 | [email protected] to make a booking.
Virtual The Slavery in the City Virtual Tour
Adult: £20 · Students & Seniors: £15 · Children: £5
N.B. This tour – Slavery in the City – is the Virtual Tour of this subject. You go on this tour from the comfort of your settee – or sitting round your kitchen table – wherever you are in the world.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE?
Its stablemate – Slavery & the City – is the Walking Tour. To go on the Slavery & the City Tour you have to be in London. You have to meet up with the guide at the designated starting point in London at the appointed hour. It – Slavery & the City – is like an actual battlefield tour – it goes over the ground.
THE ESSENTIALS
A story showing people at their worst and best, tells the horrors of the slave trade, the extreme cruelties and yet contains seeds of hope
In 1787, in London, twelve men formed the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, motivated by empathy, sympathy and compassion for their fellow human beings.
This tour is about members of that society, the struggles they faced and the methods they used to reach their goal. It is also about the horrors of this evil trade, and the legacies it has left.
Investment in the trade was widespread. In novels of the period you’ll find references to slavery and to wealth: think of the Bingleys in Pride and Prejudice, or the first Mrs Rochester in Jane Eyre. Ordinary men and women clubbed together to buy slaves as an investment, not unlike people who bought shares in BT when it was privatised. Institutions including Oxford and Cambridge universities, and the Church England owned slaves; others like Barclays Bank were founded on the proceeds while Lloyds of London insured slave ships.
The scars the slave trade left are still to heal. Black Lives Matter has brought our attention to unresolved issues. And despite the slave trade being abolished in 1807, and slavery in the British Empire abolished in 1833, slavery is still a live issue. Who made your trainers, your shirt, your coat, your mobile ‘phone? Maybe a child, a forced labourer in a Chinese prison, an underpaid woman working in an unsafe sweatshop?
Editor’s Note: For further reading, this blog post by Isobel. And here’s one of Isobel’s podcasts on the subject.
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