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Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499 (also known as Sommersett v Steuart, Somersett's case, and the Mansfield Judgment) is a judgment of the English Court of King's Bench in 1772, relating to the right of an enslaved person on English soil not to be forcibly removed from the country and sent to Jamaica for sale.
[citation needed] In the case Somerset v Stewart (1772) 98 ER 499, Lord Mansfield ruled that, as slavery was not recognised by English law, James Somerset, a slave who had been brought to England and then escaped, could not be forcibly sent to Jamaica for sale, and was set free. In Scotland, colliery (coal mine) slaves were still in use until ...
1787 Wedgwood anti-slavery medallion designed by Josiah Wedgwood for the British anti-slavery campaign. Abolitionism in the United Kingdom was the movement in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to end the practice of slavery, whether formal or informal, in the United Kingdom, the British Empire and the world, including ending the Atlantic slave trade.
Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807, which outlawed the international slave trade, but not slavery itself. The legislation was timed to coincide with the expected Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves by the United States, Britain's chief rival in maritime commerce. This legislation imposed fines that did little to deter slave trade ...
1772, Somerset v Stewart, a freedom suit ruled on by Lord Mansfield in England, who found that slavery had no basis in common law, and no "positive law" had been passed to establish it. His ruling was narrow, saying only that the master could not remove Somerset against his will from England, in order to send him to Jamaica for sale.
[8] It is reported that the court held that the man must be freed, and it is often said that the court held "that England was too pure an air for a slave to breathe in." [c] It is unclear if the effect of the case was to actually make slavery in England illegal, but rather generally to impose limits on the physical punishment on slaves.
The book is a narrative history of the late 18th- and early 19th-century anti-slavery movement in the British Empire. [4] The story centers around a group of British abolitionist campaigners and traces their campaign from its beginnings with Somerset v Stewart in 1772 until full emancipation for all British slaves was legally granted in 1838 ...
22 June – Somersett's Case: Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice delivers the decision that slavery is not supported by the common law of England. [4] 13 July – navigator James Cook sets out from Plymouth on HMS Resolution for a second Pacific voyage. [4] [5]