Granville Sharp

Granville Sharp died on 6 July 1813 and was buried at All Saints' Church, Fulham, beside his brother William Sharp and sister Elizabeth Prouse.

Granville Sharp was born on 10 November 1735 in Durham. His father Thomas Sharp was the Archdeacon of Northumberland and a prolific theological writer. His mother’s name was Judith. Granville had 13 siblings of whom several died in their infancy.

He was primarily educated at home though he also attended Durham School for some time.

He was apprenticed to a London linen-draper when he was 15. While working there he taught himself Greek and Hebrew.

His apprenticeship ended in 1757 and the next year he found a position as a clerk in the Ordnance Office at the Tower of London. He was an intelligent and curious young man who loved to pursue scholarly interests in his leisure time, and this job gave him ample opportunities for that.

His brother William was a surgeon who treated the local poor for free. On one of his visits to his brother’s surgery in 1765, Granville met a young black man, Jonathan Strong, who had been badly beaten by his master, David Lisle, and thrown into the streets. The Sharp brothers tended to his injuries and months later when Jonathan was fit enough, they found him a job with a friend of theirs.

Jonathan Strong’s miseries were, however, far from over as he was kidnapped by Lisle and sold to a planter. Once again Granville Sharp rushed to his aid and demanded that Strong be taken before the Lord Mayor, who declared him a free man.

Following this incident, Sharp was hailed as a "protector of the Negro" and more slaves appealed to him for help. In 1771, a slave named James Somerset approached him with his case. Somerset, who had been brought to Britain from Jamaica, ran away from his master and was recaptured and put on a ship bound for Jamaica. Sharp presented the case before Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice of England, who after many months of legal argument, declared that a master had no right to force an enslaved person to return to a foreign country and thus Somerset was freed.

Over the next several years he continued campaigning for the abolition of slavery and became known as the leading English abolitionist of that era. He was also a prolific writer and wrote several anti-slavery pamphlets including ‘A Declaration of the People's Natural Right to a Share in the Legislature’ (1774), ‘A Declaration of the People's Natural Right’ (1775), ‘The Law of Retribution‘(1776) and ‘The Just Limitation of Slavery in the Laws of God’ (1776).

Granville Sharp was a leading early abolitionist in England and one of the founders of The Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade which was formed in 1787. The society worked to educate the public about the abuses of the slave trade and finally achieved abolition of the international slave trade in 1807.