Historian uncovers ads for runaway slaves in Britain, debunking the myth that slavery only happened abroad

“Runaway on the 7^th from Dr Gustavus Brown’s lodgings in Glasgow, a Negro woman named Ann.”

Researchers at the University of Glasgow discovered hundreds of such adverts posted in British newspapers in the early and mid-eighteenth century, dispelling the myth that slaves didn’t exist in Britain.

The extensive project is spearheaded by history Professor Simon Newman, who sought to prove that “there were a significant number of people of colour in eighteenth-century Britain.”

Most were African or of African descent, while a smaller number were South Asian and a few were indigenous Americans. Many had been brought by their masters from Africa, the Caribbean, North America and India, usually to work as domestic servants, but sometimes as craftsmen or as sailors. A few were free, others were legally bound to work for their masters for set periods, and some were enslaved.

Dozens of Scottish and English newspapers were scoured, often by hand (the deteriorating quality of such texts meant that scanned microfilms were often of low quality) in order to locate over 800 hundred adverts of runaway slaves. The findings were put into a searchable database of newspaper advertisements.

The research is significant because it demonstrates the existence of slaves in the UK – a buried fact in the country’s history. The slave trade, according to Dr Newman, is taught in British schools according to a specific context – plantation slaves in the Caribbean and Americas.

However the project demonstrates that slaves did exist, in a relatively sizeable capacity in the UK between 1700 and 1780.

This elicits yet more questions – if slaves existed in England, how did the abolition of slavery on British soil in 1772 play out? And later in 1833, when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed, making slavery illegal in the British Empire?

Perhaps a more damning indication of the prevalence of slavery in Britain comes from the existence of "For Sale" ads for slaves posted in newspapers. One read "To be sold. A negroe servant about seventeen years of age…" and another read "To be sold, a health negro slave named Prince".

Here's a selection of three slaves who were reported to have run away from their masters in Britain: