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Joseph Sturge (2 August 1793 – 14 May 1859) was an English Quaker, abolitionist and activist. He founded the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (now Anti-Slavery International). He worked throughout his life in Radical political actions supporting pacifism, working-class rights, and the universal emancipation of . In the late 1830s, he published two books about the apprenticeship system in Jamaica, which helped persuade the British Parliament to adopt an earlier full emancipation date. In Jamaica, Sturge also helped found Free Villages with the Baptists, to provide living quarters for freed slaves; one was named Sturge Town in his memory.
After a year at school in Thornbury, Sturge boarded for three years at the Quaker Sidcot School. He then farmed with his father, and on his own account. Of pacifist views, he refused in 1813 to serve in the militia.
Failing at first to earn a living as a corn factor, at Bewdley from 1814, Sturge moved to Birmingham in 1822. There he became an importer of grain. Successful in business, with his brother Charles, he built up the company. The Sturges as a family became investors in railways and docks. Joseph from 1831 ceased to be an active partner, leaving operations to Charles, and concentrated on causes and public life. As an abolitionist, he was allied in 1831 with George Stephen in pressing Parliament for immediate legislation against slavery. The Reform Act 1832, in his view, failed to address poverty, and he worked for radical electoral reform.
Sturge was appointed an alderman in 1835. He opposed the building of the Birmingham Town Hall, to be used for performances, because of a conscientious objection to religious . He became interested in the island of Jamaica and the conditions of its enslaved workers. He visited it several times and witnessed firsthand the horrors of slavery, as well as the abuses under an apprenticeship system designed to control the labour of all former slaves above the age of six for 12 years. He worked for emancipation and abolition with African-Caribbean and English Baptists.
In 1838, after full emancipation was authorised, Sturge laid the foundation stone to the "Emancipation School Rooms" in Birmingham. Attending were United Baptist Sunday School and Baptist ministers of the city. In 1839 his work was honoured by a marble monument in a Baptist mission chapel in Falmouth, Jamaica. It was dedicated to "the Emancipated Sons of Africa".
In 1834 Sturge sailed to the West Indies to study apprenticeship as defined by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. He intended to open it to criticism as an intermediate stage en route to emancipation. He travelled throughout the West Indies and talked directly to apprentices, proprietors (planters), and others directly involved. Upon his return to Great Britain, he published Narrative of Events since the First of August 1834. In it he cited an African-Caribbean witness, to whom he referred as "James Williams" to protect him from reprisals.
The original statement was signed by two free African-Caribbeans and six apprentices, and was authenticated by an English Baptist minister Thomas Price of Hackney, who wrote the introduction. Following another trip and further study, Sturge published The West Indies in 1837. Both books highlighted the cruelty and injustice of the system of indentured apprenticeship. They reported on the abuse of apprentices, and the way the treadmill was used in prisons, and by 1840 changes had been made.
While in Jamaica, Sturge worked with the Baptist chapels to found Free Villages, to create homes for freed slaves when they achieved full emancipation. They planned the communities to be outside the control of planters.
He bought two plantations on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, Olveston, and Elberton to demonstrate that slavery was unnecessary.
As a result of Sturge's single-minded campaign, in which he publicised details of the brutality of apprenticeship to shame the British Government, a major row broke out amongst abolitionists. The more radical element were pitted against the government. Although both had the same ends in sight, Sturge and the Baptists, with mainly Nonconformist support, led a successful popular movement for immediate and full emancipation. As a consequence, the British Government moved the date for full emancipation forward to 1 August 1838. They abolished the 12-year intermediary apprenticeship scheme. For many English Nonconformists and African-Caribbean people, 1 August 1838, became recognised as the true date of abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
The Society's first major activity was to organise the World's Anti-Slavery Convention. It was held at the Freemasons' Hall, London, from 12 June 1840. Others were held in 1843 (Brussels) and 1849 (Paris). "The history of Anti-Slavery International" , Official Website, accessed 12 July 2008 It attracted delegates from Europe, North America, South Africa and Caribbean countries, as well as the British dominions of Australia and Ireland. It included African-Caribbean delegates from Haiti and Jamaica (then representing Britain), women activists from the United States, and many Nonconformists.
In 1841 Sturge travelled in the United States with the poet John Greenleaf Whittier to examine the slavery question there. On his return he published A Visit to the United States in 1841 (1842). On the same visit (22 May), he saw William Jay who was interested in forwarding the peace agenda, by international arbitration.
The resolution of the Congress mentioned Jay's ideas positively, but laid more weight on those of William Ladd, who had died in 1841, proposing international institutions to keep the peace.
In addition to his other commitments, Sturge joined the Anti-Corn Law League early in its existence. During 1842 he began a campaign for "complete suffrage", and had the support of the Christian Chartist pastor Arthur George O'Neill in Birmingham. His movement was based squarely on the middle classes. He envisaged a platform that could unite the League and the Chartist movement. The League would have nothing to do with it. Sturge had a measure of further Chartist and nonconformist support, but by the end of the year the Chartist leaders William Lovett and Feargus O'Connor had swung against him. O'Connor had supported Sturge's Complete Suffrage Union earlier in the year, before the industrial conflicts of the Plug Riots had hardened his attitude and he began to see Sturge's broadly middle class support as a threat to his leadership position.
Following a dispute over redrafting the People's Charter as a legislative bill, in December 1842 with William Sharman Crawford MP, Sturge walked out of a joint CSU-Chartist delegate conference in Birmingham. Crawford introduced their reform bill to "a small and bored House" in May 1843. The bill was lost by 101 to 32.
In the years 1842–7 Sturge ran three times for Parliament, on his "complete suffrage" platform, without success. In August 1842 he was parliamentary candidate for Nottingham, in a by-election. He was defeated by John Walter, the proprietor of The Times. In Nottingham he visited a Sunday School run by Samuel Fox. The idea of teaching not only scripture, but also basic skills such as reading and writing, was taken up by Sturge, who opened a similar school around 1845. First Day Schools, sturgefamily.com, accessed January 2010 In that year he started an Adult School movement, in Birmingham, and took steps in 1847 to spread Sunday (First-Day) Schools among Quakers.
Sturge then contested Birmingham in 1844 as a Chartism candidate, in a by-election caused by the death of Joshua Scholefield. He was strongly supported at the election hustings, split the liberal vote, but ultimately came bottom of the poll: Richard Spooner Cons 2095, William Scholefield Lib 1735 and Sturge Chartist 346. In 1847 he stood once more, for Leeds, in the general election. There he was identified as "Bainesite" — a follower of Edward Baines — and was campaigning for schooling, with no state involvement, a divisive position in the British and Foreign School Society.
In 1854 Sturge and two other Quakers, Robert Charleton and Henry Pease, travelled to Saint Petersburg to see Tzar Nicholas I, trying to prevent the outbreak of the Crimean War. In 1856 Sturge and Thomas Harvey visited the Grand Duchy of Finland to investigate the damage caused by the Royal Navy and French Navy , in attacks during the Crimean War. On this trip Sturge bought Robert Wilhelm Ekman's painting Sunday Morning in a Farmhouse, which was shown in the exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1858. The painting was brought back to Finland in 1960.Ilvas, Juha (1989): Kansallistaidetta – Suomalaista taidetta Kansallis-Osake-Pankin kokoelmissa . Helsinki: Kansallis-Osake-Pankki, p. 72.
The Joseph Sturge memorial by sculptor John Thomas was unveiled on 4 June 1862 at Five Ways. on Wheeleys Road]] On 24 March 2007, the city held a civic ceremony to formally rededicate the statue. Randal Brew, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, unveiled an interpretation board giving details of Sturge's life. On the same day, a blue plaque (historic marker) was unveiled at the site of his home in Wheeleys Road, Edgbaston. Blue plaque unveiling
Sturge Park on the Caribbean island of Montserrat was named in honour of Joseph Sturge and his son. Also on the island was Elberton, a suburb named after Joseph Sturge’s birthplace.
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