Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton was dogged, committed, determined and some say sanctimonious in everything he did. Immediately after he personally committed to Christian charity through his association by marriage with The Society of Friends, he never wavered in a lifetime of dedicated service to all the black races on the face of the earth, especially those who had been enslaved.
Known colloquially as ‘The Emancipist’, he fought tirelessly against oppression, tyranny and poverty and was handed the baton by William Wilberforce to complete the task of abolishing slavery throughout all British colonies and territories, especially in the West Indies. In this he was successful, and the civilised world rejoiced in 1833 when the British Parliament formally abolished the practice throughout the British Empire. Buxton then turned his attention to other abuses and the rights of Aboriginals everywhere, including Africa, India, Australia, the West Indies and the Americas. That is why he is honoured with a street name in North Adelaide. He cared about all the Indigenous peoples of the world, especially those in Africa.
In 1835, just as the plan to colonise South Australia was ready to proceed, it was revealed that the South Australian Commission had not given sufficient forethought to the rights, both property and otherwise, of the Indigenous Australians, who were known to roam the plains adjacent to what we now know as the City of Adelaide. This oversight was embarrassing to the Commission, especially as native rights were topical in the House of Commons at a time when Buxton was vigorously defending the Hottentots in South Africa. Reacting to the oversight, Lord Glenelg, who remained personally sympathetic to the causes espoused by Buxton, insisted from the Colonial Office that the South Australian Commission immediately appoint a Protector of Aborigines.
On the issue of the source of the salary for a Protector, Brown hastily redrafted the pertinent terms of reference for the colony, and after much haggling the commissioners reluctantly agreed to a Colonial Office appointment of a Protector of Aborigines. It was to be a Crown appointment, which necessarily undermined the arm’s-length nature of the project. From this point on and without fully appreciating it, Thomas Fowell Buxton, the dogged politician, deeply pious Christian, aristocratic philanthropist, author, brewer and slavery abolitionist, implacably etched his name in the South Australian landscape forever.
There is a generational difference between Buxton and many of the others named in Adelaide’s streets. Most were still comparatively young men at the time. Fowell, as he was usually called, was exactly the same age as Colonel William Light and only six years younger than Torrens, the elder statesman of the project.
Thomas Fowell Buxton was born on 7 April 1786 at Hedingham Castle, in Essex. His father, also named Thomas Fowell Buxton, lived from 1756 to 1792. His mother, Anna Hanbury, was from Earlham, in Norfolk. The Buxton family hailed from Earls Colne, a village in Essex. Thomas’s grandparents, Sarah Fowell (1735–1814) and Isaac Buxton, married in 1755. The young Fowell often stayed with these grandparents, especially when they were at their country seat of Belfield, near Weymouth, where they sometimes entertained King George III.
Thomas Fowell Buxton’s mother came from a long line of Quakers and his father was a wealthy Anglican, which explains his baptism. He was a popular High Sheriff of Essex when he died, when young Thomas was only 6 years old. Unfortunately, Fowell’s mother Anna later fell on comparatively hard times through a series of poor investment decisions, which seriously eroded the family position.
Thomas Fowell Buxton began his schooling at Kingston-upon-Thames when only 4 years old. It was a bitter experience and he was badly treated. When his father died, and because he was the eldest, he was prematurely thrust into a position of responsibility within the family. Both he and his brothers were then sent to Dr Charles Burney’s school in Greenwich, a much happier experience, although Fowell did not readily take to book learning. He found the strictures of the classroom so stultifying that he eventually returned home without completing his studies. Instead he spent his time around the family estate, riding, hunting and shooting. In these activities he excelled, sustaining a passionate and abiding interest in them, which lasted throughout his life.
In 1801 Buxton returned to East Anglia, in Norwich, from where his ancestors had sprung. Here he took up with a young friend by the name of (Joseph) John Gurney, one of eleven Quaker children in a large and vibrant household. Invited to stay with the Gurneys at Earlham Hall, Buxton found himself amid a bevy of petticoats, riding breeches, poetry readings, musical soirees and shelf after shelf of library books. Widower Gurney and his brood were not overly devout as Quakers, but they were savvy in the ways of polite society, and Earlham Hall rippled with literature, learning, art and culture.
Totally gripped by this experience, Buxton resolved to learn more. In 1803 he began studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where he launched into his studies, winning every academic prize for which he entered. In short, the advantages of an association with John Gurney and his siblings, including both his future wife Hannah and her sister Elizabeth (later Mrs Elizabeth Fry, the famous prison reformer), had all synergised to change Buxton into an outstanding student with great perseverance and tenacity. His will to succeed was indeterminate.
At the university and as part of his studies, he took a seat in the historical society where inductees gave lectures to the assembled students on historical subjects. According to custom, audience members were asked to choose between presenters. Buxton won convincingly. He received the silver medal. Later he went on to win three more silver medals, the most possible. When he finally graduated in May 1807 he was honoured with the Gold Medal for being the most outstanding student of his time. In a further burst of largesse the university also invited him to take up their seat in Parliament. He was deeply flattered, but on careful reflection he refused the offer, preferring to return to Earlham Hall and Hannah Gurney, whose hand he had been promised in marriage.
On 13 May 1807 Fowell Buxton married Hannah Gurney. He was just 21 years old. The couple moved into a small cottage near his mother’s new residence, close to Weymouth. Without employment he fortuitously renewed acquaintance with his mother’s brothers, who owned the Truman Brewery. His plight was explained and after studied looks and several interviews it was agreed Fowell could join the family brewing business of Truman, Hanbury & Co., of Spitalfields in London as a clerk. If after three years he proved to be satisfactory, he would then be taken on as a partner.
By 1811, at only 25, he became a full partner in the brewery. In the same year, Fowell met with his epiphany at the feet of Reverend Josiah Pratt, Secretary to the Church Missionary Society and others of the Clapham Sect. True Christian devotion and a spark of anti-slavery sentiment stirred in his soul. Shortly afterwards (in 1813) he suffered a severe illness which nearly took his life, and believing implicitly that he was in the arms of God resolved from then on to devote his life to Christian charity and social and political change. His pathway forward was revealed. The brewery, for which he was later to become the sole owner, was going well and in a few short years he became a rich man. He saw no contradiction between his business interests and his work for Christ; indeed it was the accompanying wealth which provided him with the discretionary time and money to devote himself to fighting poverty and disadvantage.
By 1816 Buxton’s attention had turned to prison reform in Britain, joining his sister-in-law Elizabeth Fry and the Gurney household in the Quaker sect and their mission against poverty and misery among the poor in London.
Buxton then entered the House of Commons, representing the seat of Weymouth. He began a long and distinguished parliamentary career which lasted for twenty years. Wilberforce had him picked out for greatness. In parliament Buxton set on a number of projects including the abolition of capital punishment – a task which took until 1960; the eradication of the Hindu practice of suttee; and the total eradication of slavery in all British colonies and protectorates. He also continued his work on prison reform and his support for Elizabeth Fry’s Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate.
In the spring of 1820 Buxton’s faith was sorely tested, for within the space of five weeks he lost four of his eight children. The eldest boy, a 10-year-old, had been sent home from school with an inflammatory condition that deteriorated. He died in March. Five weeks later three of Fowell and Hannah’s little girls, all under four, also fell ill and died, whooping cough and measles proving to be a lethal cocktail. The family was devastated and repaired to Tunbridge Wells to find solace. Later that year the remnants of his family and his sister-in-law, Priscilla Gurney, moved into Cromer Hall, the seat of the Wyndham family from whom Buxton rented the property.
In the parliament, the imposing 193 centimetres (six feet, four inches) frame of ‘Elephant’ Buxton, as his sister-in-law Elizabeth Fry endearingly called him, rose ponderously to enumerate the issues on his mind. It must be said that Buxton was never a team player, neither Whig nor Tory, although nominally his family had been Whigs for generations. He was obsessed by two major reforms: the abolition of slavery and the more humane treatment of prisoners.
By 1823 Wilberforce and Buxton teamed up to form the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, which later became the Anti-Slavery Society whose brief was more extensive than Buxton’s earlier Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery. Thereafter Buxton and Wilberforce took closer attention to the eradication of abuses, not just in British territories but also throughout the world.
On 15 May 1823 Buxton brought the resolution to the House, but it faltered and was withdrawn and replaced with a more tempered set of motions full of platitudes but essentially anti-slavery in sentiment. The parliament was sympathetic but lacked the will for everlasting change, there being too many vested interests among the estate owners in the West Indies and elsewhere. In 1824 it became a capital offence and for the next ten years Buxton chipped away at successive parliaments with motion after motion in search of its final abolition.
The final abolition of slavery in all British colonies came not without problems. Reparation to plantation owners became one of the prices for success and cost the government some £20,000,000 and the promise of an apprenticeship system for all slaves. It took five years, didn’t conclude until 1838, and was difficult to administer. Furthermore, the abolition was a success in all British territories except in Mauritius, where it continued unhindered into the 1840s.
Nevertheless, on 1 August 1834 or ‘Emancipation Day’ as it became known, more than 700,000 slaves were set free throughout the British Empire. Buxton graciously received a silver plate to celebrate the occasion and immediately began to canvas the issue of slavery elsewhere. He declared three main objectives: to complete the process of emancipation everywhere; abolish the Portuguese and Spanish slave trade; and hold Britain to the just treatment of all Aboriginals.
Pricked by the abuses in Africa towards Indigenous people generally and fired by the need for tangible results, Buxton sought reparation for the Hottentots (otherwise known as the Indigenous Khoi), whose land had been usurped in the Adelaide territory of South Africa. He was successful and their lands were returned.
At home he formed the London City Mission and the Aborigines Protection Society, while maintaining a continuing interest in other causes such as prison discipline, cruelty towards animals and the proper observance of the Sabbath. In the House of Commons he initiated a Parliamentary Select Committee to inquire into the treatment of all Aboriginals in British provinces, which reported in 1837. That same year, and possibly as one of his last acts in parliament, Buxton joined Sir William Molesworth, (Sir) Henry George Ward, Sir George Grey, Charles Buller and others on the Select Committee to inquire into the practice of convict transportation.
With the power and influence of the Philosophical Radicals and other elements of liberalism in the parliament beginning to wane by 1837, Buxton lost his seat for the first time in twenty years.
Outside parliament he retained some nominal interests in business activities, including a directorship of the Alliance Insurance Company and a detached interest in a few mining ventures. But his passion for the liberation of Africans continued to burn brightly. In 1839 he formed the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and for the Civilisation of Africa. Essentially the aims were to take Christianity to the peoples of Africa, where it was presumed it would be a civilising influence.
Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton died on 19 February 1845. The funeral was held at Overstrand, near Cromer, where he was buried in the small church graveyard in sight of the North Sea. The nation grieved. Such was his importance that Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s consort and nominal President of the Anti-Slavery Society, headed a subscription list of 50,000 who raised a sculptured monument to Fowell in Westminster Abbey. This was a tangible accolade of the highest distinction. His son, Charles, also erected a memorial fountain to him, which stood until 1940 in Parliament Square, adjacent to Westminster. It is now in the Victoria Tower Gardens. In Sierra Leone they placed a bust of Buxton in St George’s Cathedral. Both Fowell Buxton and Elizabeth Fry are also memorialised on the British five-pound note.
Thomas Fowell Buxton never came to South Australia, but his son, also Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton Baronet GCMG, became Governor of South Australia from 29 October 1895 to 29 March 1899. I am sure that in his short term in the Antipodes he visited Buxton Street, North Adelaide on more than one occasion.
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