Online Exhibitions

We are now starting to make a number of exhibitions we have produced at the office available to view on-line. Further exhibitions will be added in due course.  

The first exhibition available is :

"The Long Road to Freedom" - the story of slavery and the campaign for its abolition as told through local records

This was a major exhibition held in March and April 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the Act to Abolish the Slave Trade.  The exhibition is currently touring various venues.

The Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland contains a significant collection of documents which reveal local connections with the slave trade, and with those who battled to abolish slavery itself.

There are documents containing the names and ages of slaves on plantations in the Caribbean and on the north coast of South America – plantations owned by families in Leicestershire and Rutland.  

Leading Leicester abolitionists, Elizabeth Heyrick and Susanna Watts, orchestrated a vigorous anti-slavery campaign in Leicester, including a boycott on sugar.  Local landowner, Thomas Babington of Rothley Temple, was a friend of William Wilberforce, and hosted meetings of anti-slavery campaigners at his home.

A unique collection of mid-19^th century papers let us hear the voices of slaves in a slave court in West Africa.  And the stories of two former slaves, Rasselas Morjan and Edward Juba, who came back to Leicestershire with their owners, are told in the exhibition.  

The Long Road to Freedom shows that the struggle to end slavery altogether was long and difficult – and still continues to this day in a variety of ways.  

Please see Slavery Exhibition for full details.