Just a few moments down the road, we arrive at the Royal Opera House. He even met Queen Victoria at Windsor castle. He spoke to half a million here in the first six months of the UK in 1876 - with Madame Tussauds making a mannequin of him a year after. The inspiration for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold a million copies here in the first year or so, he penned an autobiography that also took off in the UK. Black American Josiah Henson had escaped and settled in Canada. These activists became - often controversial - public figures on both sides of the Atlantic. READ MORE: 'Rent freezes, free school meals and free energy for the poorest': Sadiq Khan's cost of living crisis ideasįreemasons' Hall in the West End could hold thousands - and hosted touring former US slaves fighting for equality (Image: Josiah Mortimer) Revd Henry Highland Garnet, a radical US abolitionist, spoke here, as did Revd Samuel Ringgold Ward. It could hold 3,000 or so people in one hall alone.

The Freemasons' Hall in the West End hosted a major 1840 Anti-Slavery Convention, with African Americans leading the speeches. And the movement for “free trade” - rather than 'blood stained' - cotton drew huge crowds in the capital. These Americans were travelling to every single corner of the UK: Penzance, the Orkneys, the Peaks, the foot of Snowdonia where people didn’t even speak English,” she told guests.īy the 1850s, 90 per cent of the cotton coming into the UK was from slaves in the US.

“They came over by steamship to inform Brits about the situation in the US. London was the launchpad for former US slaves’ speaking tours of the UK throughout the 19th century, Dr Hannah-Rose Murray, a University of Edinburgh academic told Londoners on Tuesday (August 23) - the UNESCO day of remembrance for the victims of the slave trade. Now a series of walking tours in London - backed by City Hall - is shining a light on the untold history of London landmarks, as sites where former US slaves rallied Britain to their cause: full equality and a boycott on slave-made goods. Britain may have abolished the slave trade in the UK in 1807 - but it lingered on for decades, not least in the US where slave-harvested cotton continued to fuel Britain’s industrial revolution.

London royal opera house