How Teston abolished the slave trade
Too few people know the vital role that Teston played in the late 18th century campaign to halt the slave trade.
Between 1782 and 1789, the Rev James Ramsey was the vicar of the parish church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul.
Ramsey, a Scot and the son of a ship’s carpenter, had formerly been a Royal Naval surgeon on board
HMS Arundel, sailing in the Caribbean under the command of Sir Charles Middleton.
In November 1759, the Arundel stopped and boarded a British slave trader, the
Swift, and the conditions in which Ramsey observed the slaves being transported had a profound effect on him.
Shorty after, Ramsey had an accident on board, fracturing his hip, which left him lame.
Invalided out of the navy in 1761, he decided to take holy orders and was ordained by the Bishop of London.
Choosing to work among slaves in the Caribbean, he travelled to the island of St Kitts, where he held services for both white and black worshippers.
He was also appointed surgeon to several plantations on the island and so had ample opportunity to observe firsthand the harsh treatment of the slaves. He began to agitate for reform, which led to much resentment from the planters.
Exhausted by their intimidation, Ramsey left St Kitts in 1777 and stayed briefly with his old commander Sir Charles, who lived at Barham Court in Teston.
Ramsey then rejoined the navy in April 1778 as a chaplain in the West Indies, but returned to Kent in 1780, when Sir Charles, who was by then Comptroller of the navy, secured for him the living of vicar at Teston.
Ramsey arrived, bringing with him his black servant, a freed slave called Nestor.
Throughout his time in the West Indies, Ramsey had kept a journal of the inhuman treatment he had witnessed, and used it to write An
Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, published in 1784, which began the debate on the slave trade.
Ramsey wrote: “The ordinary punishments of slaves, for the common crimes of neglect, absence from work, eating the sugar cane and theft, are cart whipping, beating with a stick, the chain, an iron crook about the neck... a ring about the ankle, and confinement in a dungeon.
“In short, in the place of decency, sympathy, morality and religion; slavery produces cruelty and oppression.”
Greatly encouraged by
Lady Margaret Middleton, more essays followed. Lady Middleton used her influence in London society, where she was friends with theatre owner David Garrick and painter Joshua Reynolds, to spread the word. Soon a group of abolitionist politicians and churchmen were meeting regularly in Teston.
Among them was William Wilberforce, the MP for Hull, whose name later became most closely associated with the Abolition movement. He himself had connections to nearby East Farleigh where his son was the local vicar.
Ramsey also met a young abolitionist, Thomas Clarkson, in 1786, and appointed him curate at Teston. Clarkson was given the task of collecting evidence to use against the slave traders, and Sir Charles gave permission for him to enter naval dockyards to gain the testimony of sailors and to collect items such iron handcuffs, leg-shackles and branding irons used by the slavers. The following year the Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded.
Wilberforce made his first speech proposing the abolition of slavery in the House of Commons in May 1789. Ramsey never lived to see the fruits of the campaign he had sparked – he died in July 1789 and is buried at Teston – but he was confident of its success.
Only 56, James Ramsay was already extremely ill suffering from a gastric haemorrhage. He wrote to Clarkson on July 10, 1789: “Whether the bill goes through the House or not, the whole of this business I think now to be in such a train as to enable me to bid farewell to the present scene with the satisfaction of not having lived in vain.”
The Act that abolished the slave trade was passed 18 years later in 1807. Each year, on the anniversary of Ramsey’s death, the congregation at Saint Peter and Saint Paul Church in Teston lay flowers on his grave. This year, parishioner Dawn Page, has also written a book about him. Entitled The Mighty Pen, it costs £10 and is available at the church where Ramsey preached.