THERE IS DEATH IN THE POT - The University of Texas at Arlington

established. Of those, twenty were organized under the direction of the Female Society
for Birmingham. 36
In addition to aiding the establishment of ladies’ associations, the complex
organization of the Female Society for Birmingham facilitated the arduous work of
canvassing entire communities on behalf of the anti-slavery cause. The visitors and
collectors of the women’s associations, including the Birmingham group, proved
essential to spreading the anti-slavery message and encouraging the boycott of the
products of slavery. In 1827, the Birmingham women reported that more than half of the
households in the Birmingham area had been visited; in 1828, the number of households
visited rose to eighty-three percent. In 1829, they completed their canvas of their entire
Birmingham area. 37 Heyrick and her friend and co-editor Susanna Watts were credited
with canvassing most of Leicester. Women in Sheffield conducted a similar canvas.
Door-to-door canvassing was a uniquely female method for distributing anti-slavery
tracts, most likely adopted from the system of female district visitors to the poor used by
Laws, shall press a free-born infant to her bosom.” According to Midgley, the “word for word” resolution
suggests that the three later groups copied the resolution from the Birmingham association, further evidence
of the influence of the Birmingham group.
36 Midgley, Women against Slavery, 47.
37 The Second Report of the Female Society of Birmingham, West Bromwich, Wednesbury, Walsall
and Their Respective Neighbourhoods for the Relief of British Negro Slaves (Birmingham: Benjamin
Hudson, 1827), 17; Third Report of the Female Society of Birmingham, 17; Minutes, November 26, 1829,
Birmingham Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves, Minute Book, Reel 2, Records Relating to the
Birmingham Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves, 1825-1919, Birmingham Reference Library,
hereafter cited as BLS. See also Karen I. Halbersleben, Women’s Participation in the British Antislavery
Movement, 1824-1865 (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993), 89.
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