Elizabeth Heyrick

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Standard Name: Heyrick, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Coltman
Married Name: Elizabeth Heyrick
Though, as a woman, she worked behind the scenes (not in parliament but through print and private direct action) EH of Leicester was a major, under-recognised figure in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade. Her pamphlet publications address war, cruelty to animals, workers' wages, prison reform, and other social and political topics as well as abolition. Her political thinking on many points startlingly anticipates later socialist positions. She also published lessons for children and a conduct book. The first of these is the genre in which, in the early nineteenth century, her writing career began. Though her sister knew of only sixteen of her pamphlets, the count has since risen steeply. But their unavailability in major reference libraries has hampered recognition of her.
Corfield, Kenneth. “Elizabeth Heyrick: Radical Quaker”. Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760-1930, edited by Gail Malmgreen, Indiana University Press, 1986, pp. 41-67.
53

Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Anthologization Mary Scott
Pickering and Chatto includes published and unpublished writings by MS (as well as work by Anne Steele , her niece Mary Steele, later Dunscombe , Elizabeth Heyrick , and Maria Grace Saffery ) in the...
Friends, Associates Catherine Hutton
CH 's friends included novelists Sarah Harriet Burney and Robert Bage , publisher Sir Richard Phillips , Elizabeth Arnold (whom she calls sister of Catharine Macaulay , but who was actually the sister of Macaulay's...
Friends, Associates Susanna Watts
In her own more local circle, however, SW was relaxed and good company. She belonged to a Book Society . She was a close friend of the Hutton and the Coltman families and especially, in...
Friends, Associates Eleanor Sleath
ES 's group of friends included the writer Susanna Watts (her distant relation), the Reverend John Dudley (who was suspected of being closer than a friend, and whose wife, Ann , made trouble for Sleath)...
Intertextuality and Influence Susanna Watts
SW gives one of her imaginary editors, Philanthropy, a painfully emotional as well as judgemental attitude to slavery. The second number includes Remarks on the Descent of the Africans from Ham, in the form...
Leisure and Society Susanna Watts
SW lived an independent social life which combined the old-fashioned with the modern. She was a snuff-taker.
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers, 1895.
158-9
In 1800 she and the Coltman sisters, Elizabeth and Mary Ann , belonged to a self-consciously bluestocking...
politics Lydia Maria Child
LMC 's feminist ideas, though foreshadowed in her adolescent encounter with Milton, were slow to develop. When Frances Wright visited Boston in summer 1829 and gave a public lecture about women's rights, Child not only...
politics Susanna Watts
As a result of the boycott launched by SW and Elizabeth Heyrick the previous year (targeted at shops as well as consumers), almost a quarter of the population of Leicester had given up sugar.
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott, 2004.
25
politics Susanna Watts
Watts and her maid were two of the original subscribers to the Leicester Ladies Anti-Slavery Society , formed this same month.
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott, 2004.
30
When William Wilberforce expressed disapproval of ladies' anti-slavery societies, which he said were...
Publishing Elizabeth Hands
The advertisement for the book in print, like the pre-notification, was carried by Jopson's Coventry Mercury. The volume was dedicated to the dramatist Bertie Greatheed . It was issued in two forms: ordinary copies...
Publishing Catherine Hutton
CH (now nearly ninety) published in Ainsworth's Magazine her sketch of the Coltman family: that of Elizabeth Heyrick 's mother .
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers, 1895.
66
Textual Features Catherine Hutton
The title-page bore CH 's name, and mentioned her previous novel. This book too is epistolary, dominated more than its precedessor by its heroine. Dorothy Penrose is the mountaineer of the title (the term here...
Textual Production Amelia Opie
AO 's The Black Man's Lament; or, How to Make Sugar, designed for child readers and published in 1826,
Opie, Amelia. “Introduction”. Adeline Mowbray, edited by Shelley King and John B. Pierce, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. i - xxix.
xxxix
has been reprinted in Pickering and Chatto 's 8-volume set Slavery, Abolition and Emancipation...
Textual Production Susanna Watts
SW wrote a poem, To the Memory of Elizabeth Heyrick, on the death on 18 October 1831 of her close friend (with whose abolitionist writings of 1824 Heyrick's memoirist seems to associate her).
Beale, Catherine Hutton, editor. Catherine Hutton and Her Friends. Cornish Brothers, 1895.
216-17, 206
Textual Production Susanna Watts
Her claim to be acting with two friends may reflect the involvement of the sisters Elizabeth Heyrick and Mary Ann Coltman .
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott, 2004.
26
Cockshaw , the publisher, took in letters to the editor: that is...

Timeline

1824: The Combination Acts of 1799-1800 prohibiting...

National or international item

1824

The Combination Acts of 1799-1800 prohibiting trade unions and strikes were repealed.
Mitchell, Sally, editor. Victorian Britain: An Encyclopedia. Garland Press, 1988.
765
Corfield, Kenneth. “Elizabeth Heyrick: Radical Quaker”. Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760-1930, edited by Gail Malmgreen, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 41-67.
55

8 April 1825: Lucy Townsend hosted a meeting at which the...

National or international item

8 April 1825

Lucy Townsend hosted a meeting at which the first British slavery association for women was formed, the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves (which later changed its name to the Female Society for Birmingham

1 January 1831: William Lloyd Garrison launched his anti-slavery...

Writing climate item

1 January 1831

William Lloyd Garrison launched his anti-slavery journal The Liberator with a reference to Elizabeth Heyrick 's doctrine of immediate, not gradual abolition as the only impregnable position to assume.
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

1 August 1834: The Slavery Abolition Act or Emancipation...

National or international item

1 August 1834

The Slavery Abolition Act or Emancipation Bill came into effect in the British Empire.
Haydn, Joseph. Haydn’s Dictionary of Dates and Universal Information. Editor Vincent, Benjamin, 21st ed., Ward, Lock and Bowden, 1895.
1137
Colley, Linda. Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837. Yale University Press, 1992.
355
Williams, Helen Maria. A Poem on the Bill Lately Passed for Regulating the Slave Trade. T. Cadell, 1788, http://BL.
175
Langer, William L., editor. An Encyclopedia of World History: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern, Chronologically Arranged. 4th ed., Houghton Mifflin, 1968.
657
Halbersleben, Karen I. Women’s Participation in the British Antislavery Movement, 1824-1865. Edwin Mellen Press, 1993.
202-9
Corfield, Kenneth. “Elizabeth Heyrick: Radical Quaker”. Religion in the Lives of English Women, 1760-1930, edited by Gail Malmgreen, Croom Helm, 1986, pp. 41-67.
48

Texts

Heyrick, Elizabeth. A Christmas-Box, for the Advocates of Bull-Baiting. 1809.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Appeal to the Hearts and Consciences of British Women. A. Cockshaw, 1828.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Cursory Remarks on the Evil Tendency of Unrestrained Cruelty. Harvey and Darton, 1823.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Exposition of One Principal Cause of the National Distress. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1817.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Familiar Letters Addressed to Children and Young Persons of the Middle Ranks. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1811.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Immediate, Not Gradual, Abolition. 1824.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Instructive Hints, in Easy Lessons for Children. Darton and Harvey, 1800.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Instructive Hints, in Easy Lessons for Children. Darton, Harvey and Darton, 1816.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. Observations on the Offensive and Injurious Effect of Corporal Punishment. Hatchard and Son; Hurst, Chance, 1827.
Heyrick, Elizabeth. The Warning. Darton and Harvey, 1805.