Alexander Falconbridge (c. 1760–1792) was a British surgeon who took part in four voyages in

slave Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...

ships between 1782 and 1787. In time he became an abolitionist and in 1788 published ''An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa''. In 1791 he was sent by the Anti-Slavery Society to Granville Town, Sierra Leone, a community of freed slaves, where he died a year later in 1792.

Early life

Falconbridge was born around 1760 in England or Scotland, possibly

Prestonpans Prestonpans ( gd, Baile an t-Sagairt, Scots: ''The Pans'') is a small mining town, situated approximately eight miles east of Edinburgh, Scotland, in the Council area of East Lothian. The population as of is. It is near the site of the 1745 ...

or Bristol.

The slave trade

The British surgeon Alexander Falconbridge served as a ship's surgeon on four slave trade voyages between 1782 and 1787 (on the ships ''Tartar'' (1782), ''Emilia'' (1783-84), ''Alexander'' (1785-86) and, again, ''Emilia'' (1786-87)Alston, David (2021), ''Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean'', Edinburgh University Press, p. 19, before rejecting the slave trade and becoming an abolitionist. Falconbridge gained his experience on slave ships before he met the anti-slavery campaigner

Thomas Clarkson Thomas Clarkson (28 March 1760 – 26 September 1846) was an English abolitionist, and a leading campaigner against the slave trade in the British Empire. He helped found The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade (also known ...

following which he became a member of the Anti-Slavery Society. Clarkson was the author of a pamphlet entitled ''A Summary View of the Slave Trade and of the Probable Consequences of Its Abolition'', published in 1787. Clarkson had a high regard for Falconbridge who on more than one occasion acted as his personal armed bodyguard whilst he gathered evidence against the slave trade. After meeting Clarkson, Falconbridge published in 1788 ''An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa'', an influential book in the

abolitionist Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, is the movement to end slavery. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and liberate the enslaved people. The British ...

movement. In this book, he talked about the trade from when the ships first acquired captives from the African coast, through their treatment during the

Middle Passage The Middle Passage was the stage of the Atlantic slave trade in which millions of enslaved Africans were transported to the Americas as part of the triangular slave trade. Ships departed Europe for African markets with manufactured goods (first ...

, to the time they were sold into hereditary bondage in the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

In 1790 Alexander gave verbal evidence before a

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

Committee. Many of them were hostile toward him.

Final voyage and death

In 1791, Falconbridge was selected by the Anti-Slavery Society to sail to

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierra ...

with his wife Anna Maria Falconbridge, Anna Maria; and his brother William, with the intent of reorganising the failed settlement of freed slaves in Granville Town, Sierra Leone. Unfortunately, his wife Anna Maria did not share his idealistic views about the settlement. The couple quarrelled; Falconbridge began to drink excessively, due to marital problems and ailing health and, it would seem, disenchantment with the Sierra Leone Company. A number of Falconbridge's contemporaries were dismissed for vague reasons and it may be that the Company used them as scapegoats. Dismissals included Charles Horwood brother of Anna Maria, Isaac DuBois, Anna's second husband, and eventually Clarkson himself. Falconbridge eventually died of drinking a week before Christmas 1792. Henry Thornton, chairman of the Sierra Leone Company, replaced him as the company's commercial agent only hours before his death. The Sierra Leone company refused to acknowledge the claim of his wife Anna Maria for monies owed to her late husband and, perhaps conveniently, the company records went missing.

Legacy

The colony was eventually named

Freetown Freetown is the capital and largest city of Sierra Leone. It is a major port city on the Atlantic Ocean and is located in the Western Area of the country. Freetown is Sierra Leone's major urban, economic, financial, cultural, educational and p ...

, and it seems likely that Falconbridge Point in Freetown is named after Alexander Falconbridge. Both Alexander and his brother William, who died in Freetown the previous year, are most likely buried in the Freetown area, though the exact location is not recorded.

Notes

External links

*Alexander Falconbridge (1788)
An account of the slave trade on the coast of Africa
' on the

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