Lucy Townsend

Lucy Townsend (née Jesse; 25 July 1781 – 20 April 1847) was a British abolitionist. She started the first Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society in Birmingham, UK, titled the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves. Although the British slave trade had been abolished 1807, her society was a model for others in Britain and America which campaigned to end slavery in the British West Indies and the US. The British Ladies' Society's role in abolitionism is considered to have had an international impact.

Life Townsend's family came from Staffordshire. Her father, William Jesse, was the evangelical incumbent at All Saints Church in West Bromwich. In 1807 she married Rev. Charles Townsend, who was the curate of West Bromwich and a campaigner against slavery. They became the parents of six children and they were both opposed to cruel sports as well as slavery. Move your cursor to identify delegates but you will not find Townsend. The role of abolitionist women in Britain was independent. For many years these anti-slavery organisations, which were run by women, were dismissed as of marginal interest, but recent research has revealed that these groups had a distinct and national impact.

Townsend's organisation was not affiliated with any national organisation, neither was it a partner organisation for Birmingham's (men's) Anti-Slavery Organisation. In fact women like Elizabeth Heyrick, Eliza Wigham and Jane Smeal believed that slavery should not be gradually abolished but it should be immediately abolished. At the convention she would meet women who represented other leading ladies' organisations. Eliza Wigham was there representing the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society, Mary Anne Rawson was from the Sheffield Society; Jane Smeal from Glasgow; Amelia Opie from Norwich; Elizabeth Pease from Darlington and Anne Knight from Chelmsford.

Townsend lived at the rectory where her husband was the clergyman at St. Lawrence's Church. She died in Thorpe in 1847.