The Pro Slavery Petition

On October 4, 1804, twenty-one men convened at the Bull’s Head Inn in Manchester. Their goal was to erect a ‘handsome building in the Market Place for the purpose of a Communal Coffee Room and Tavern’ for the merchants and manufacturers of the town and its vicinity.[1] These men would become the first governing committee of the Manchester Exchange, a corporation that would be the central hub for trade for the city for more than one hundred and fifty years until it collapsed in 1968.

There had previously been an Exchange on Market Street, a street away, from 1729 to 1792.[2] This acted as a place where merchants could conduct their business, but also was used by other tradesmen to sell their wares and hosted various community events, such as performances. The building’s founder, Sir Oswald Mosley, designed it to serve the needs of the upper classes, such as holding private magistrate meetings in the closed off upper section. However, the open lower level, accessible to the public, earned a reputation for being less respectable. This decline led to its closure and gave it the nickname ‘Penniless Hill,’ reflecting its poor image.[3] When building this new commercial building, these men wanted to ensure it would be a room that remained private to the middle and upper classes of Manchester, unlike that of the previous Exchange.

The actions of this first committee demonstrates a history that contrasts the dominant narratives that are often used to describe the city’s history, especially in the 19th century. For instance, Manchester is often understood as being a centre point for political radicalism, as seen in 1806, when thousands of Mancunians signed a petition in support for the abolition of the slave trade.[4] However, through this first committee, we can see a group of men who were deeply embedded in transatlantic slavery and colonial economy. They traded and manufactured with goods produced by enslaved labour and were connected either directly or indirectly with plantation ownership. On top of all this, they used their power and influence to lobby in favour of the slave trade and reduce tariffs on slave grown goods, perpetuating slavery and helping to continue its growth.

The Pro-Slavery Petition

In 1806, the same year the Exchange building first opened its doors, at least ten members of its governing committee signed a petition opposing the Foreign Slave Trade Abolition Bill, which sought to ban the trade of enslaved people across the British Empire.[5] These men – B.H. Green, William Myers, George Philips, William Douglas, John Leaf, William Fox, John Pooley, John Leigh Philips, John Barton, and Joshua Barnsley – actively and publicly campaigned to preserve this brutal and highly profitable trade. This underscores a stark and often overlooked truth: the Manchester Exchange was founded and funded by individuals who sought to uphold and expand the transatlantic slave trade.

This finding challenges the dominant abolitionist narrative often associated with Manchester, which celebrates the thousands of Mancunians who signed anti-slavery petitions. While these efforts were undoubtedly significant, the petition signed by half of the Exchange’s first committee reveals the city’s divided reality. The leaders who shaped Manchester’s economic and civic landscape were working against abolitionist goals, instead prioritizing their financial interests and therefore the exploitation of enslaved people.

The profits from slavery were integral to Manchester’s rise as the world’s first industrial city. The transatlantic slave trade fuelled the cotton industry, providing the raw materials that drove Manchester’s mills, factories, and wealth. As noted in Eric Williams’ Capitalism and Slavery, the industrial revolution and the city’s infrastructure were built on the foundations of slavery, with one-third of Lancashire’s exports being used in the slave trade to west Africa and half being sold to the plantation colonies in the Caribbean and North America until 1770.[6] This duality between public abolitionist support and private profiteering reflects the complexities of Manchester’s relationship with slavery.

Connections to the Transatlantic Slave Trade

The founding committee members of the Manchester Exchange were deeply embedded in the transatlantic slave economy, with ties through plantation ownership, cotton manufacturing, and trade in slave-produced commodities. Their collective wealth and influence were rooted in this system, which shaped their political and economic actions after the Abolition of Foreign Slave Trade Bill was successfully passed in 1807. By focusing on a few of these men’s individual roles, motivations and connections to these economies, we can understand their staunch support for preserving and expanding access to slave-produced goods, something they carried on through the institution of the Exchange.

One prominent example is George Philips, the first chairman of the Exchange. From about 1805, Philips was a partner in Boddington, Sharp and Philips, a firm that owned the Success estate in Hanover, Jamaica.[7] This estate relied on the forced labour of enslaved people to produce goods for the global market, highlighting Philips’ direct involvement in plantation slavery. Philips also went on to be one of the first backers of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, showing how this wealth generated from his plantations was used to help support and grow key Manchester institutions.

Similarly, John Barton leveraged his wealth from the cotton trade to secure political and economic influence in Manchester. He was part of the family business Henry and John Barton & Co., a company begun by his father Henry Barton.[8] Henry Barton and his brother George Barton were one of the early fustian manufacturers in Manchester. Fustian, a blend of cotton and linen, used the raw materials of slave-produced cotton. At Henry Barton’s death in 1818, he left an estimated personal estate of £160,000 (16 million in today’s currency), making him one of the richest men in Manchester.[9] John Barton inherited this wealth and continued his family’s trade as cotton merchants, generating enough wealth from the trade to purchase land in the countryside and become influential in other Manchester institutions including Manchester Royal Infirmary of which he was a benefactor.[10] It was this influence he brought to the Exchange, using it to further the interests of Manchester’s cotton merchants.

‘Duties on the Importation of Cotton Wool’

John Barton’s influence can be seen in the Exchange’s petition to repeal the duties on cotton wool importation, where he was specifically named and thanked.[11] In 1815, a newspaper article from the Exchange Committee Room thanked several men for successfully appealing to the government to repeal these cotton duties.[12] These duties reduced cotton merchants’ profits by raising the cost of importing raw materials from countries outside the British Empire, particularly affecting trade with the United States. American upland cotton, prized for producing cheap, high-demand materials, was highly desirable for British manufacturers.[13] However, the U.S.’s monopoly on this cotton, combined with the tariffs, made maintaining production levels more challenging. The committee therefore pushed to make it easier for them to interact with the transatlantic slavery economy, even after the Abolition bill had been successfully passed in 1807.