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Project Title: Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom and Race in the Eighteenth Century
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Runaway Slaves in Britain: Bondage, Freedom and Race in the Eighteenth
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Runaways in Britain
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Previous and Current Applications
Detailed Research Description
Summary
Context
Historians of eighteenth-century Britain know very little about the many enslaved Africans who lived and died in
Georgian Britain, and most scholarship has treated the trans-Atlantic slave trade and racial slavery itself as
institutions that existed far from the British Isles. This project will involve an extensive research effort in order to
locate, collate, analyse and make accessible information about people who were enslaved in Britain and who
sought to escape their bondage. Compilation and analysis of this data will:
(1) increase knowledge and understanding of slaves in Georgian Britain
(2) explain how and why many of the enslaved sought freedom in and among white Britons
(3) considerably enhance understanding of the nature and functioning of this multi-racial society
(4) provide a much deeper understanding of the immediate social context for the ending of slavery in the British
Isles in the 1770s, the closure of the transatlantic slave trade in 1807, and the final abolition of slavery in 1834
Slaves who ran away generated records of their lives and their motives. To the enslaved flight represented one of
the greatest acts of self-determination, while to slave-owners it was a significant threat to property, productivity and
profit. Eager to recapture their valuable property slave-owners placed advertisements in newspapers, describing
the physical characteristics, mannerisms, habits, skills and inclinations of people who are otherwise all but
completely absent from historical records. Consequently runaway slave advertisements (and sometimes court
records related to the capture of runaways) yield an unexpectedly rich source of information about the enslaved
and slavery, and such sources have been collated and utilised to very good effect by historians of North American
and Caribbean slavery. (1)
American and Caribbean runaway slave advertisements encourage an image of fierce independence and bitter
resistance, and historians have tended to regard running away in those environments as a dramatic form of
resistance by means of which ‘many runaways were seeking personal freedom while some worked against the
system of slavery itself.’ (2) These historians have seen running away as emblematic of a resistance to slavery that
pervaded and delineated African American or Afro-Caribbean communities. In this light, running away was a deeply
politicized act, a racialised assertion of individual liberty against enslavement. This understanding of the stories of
runaway slaves has enhanced understanding of resistance to enslavement and the development of black
community and culture in the Caribbean and North America. Much of this scholarship has focused on the
eighteenth century, a period that was vital both in the consolidation of slavery in British North America and the
Caribbean, and in the development of a new culture and society among enslaved people drawn from different parts
of West and Central Africa. Between 1701 and 1800 almost 2.5 million enslaved Africans were transported to
British colonies, representing 78% of all of those taken from Africa to British colonies during the entire history of the
British transatlantic slave trade. (3)
However, while the study of Caribbean and North American runaways has massively expanded our knowledge of
slavery and freedom in these regions, few people realise that there were a significant number of enslaved people in
Georgian Britain. What little popular and academic work there is on Britain's African slaves has usually focused on
the Somerset and Knight cases which ended slavery in England and Scotland in 1772 and 1778 respectively. (4)
Africans in eighteenth-century Britain often remain all but invisible in most academic and popular work on this
period, yet by the end of the century they constituted Britain’s largest non-white community. The best recent
estimate suggests that in 1800 at least ten thousand black people lived in London alone, and many more lived in
the cities (such as Bristol, Liverpool, Lancaster and Glasgow) that were most closely associated with Atlantic trade.
(5) Beyond these urban clusters Africans lived and worked throughout Georgian Britain, not least because many
planters, merchants, ships' officers and even clergymen who returned from the Americas had brought back black
slaves, often taking them to rural homes and estates.
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Environment, circumstances, opportunities and motivations were very different in Britain, and this project will
enormously expand our knowledge and understanding of the Africans who lived in eighteenth-century Britain, the
work they did, and their relationships with the communities they inhabited. Slavery and the transatlantic slave trade
generated considerable wealth and significant employment in Britain, resulting in tremendous pressure to protect
chattel slavery, yet many runaways clearly believed that they would be able to live, work and even marry and raise
families as members of white communities: inter-racial marriages and families were far more common in England
and Scotland than in the New World. While in eighteenth-century North America and the Caribbean runaways
generally sought refuge in black communities, a full century before the existence of America’s Underground
Railroad many runaways in Britain were aided and sheltered by white communities.
This project will focus on the lives of enslaved and free British Africans during the three-quarters of the eighteenth
century preceding the abolition of slavery on British soil. It will result in the first detailed study of Africans in
Georgian Britain, as well as creating an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers and the public at large. By
unearthing and then analyzing the stories of men, women and children who ran away from their owners in England
and Scotland, this project will realize three related objectives:
(i) the recovery of the histories of individual enslaved Africans in Georgian Britain
(ii) the expansion of our knowledge and understanding of the Britons who owned and pursued runaway slaves, the
the Britons who provided refuge and support to runaway slaves
(iii) the creation of a resource that will significantly increase public and academic knowldge and understanding of
the existence and nature of Britain's first major community of Africans
Research methodology
This project will utilize and adapt some of the methods employed by scholars who have studied Caribbean and
North American runaways in order to answer research questions and achieve key research objectives that are
shaped by the entirely different social context of Georgian Britain. During the eighteenth century the number of
newspapers published in England and Scotland grew dramatically. In London, for example, there were about ten
newspapers at the beginning and over fifty by the end of the eighteenth century. This project will involve sampling
virtually all of the newspapers printed in each of the major British cities involved with the trade in slaves and the
commodities they produced – London, Bristol, Liverpool, Lancaster and Glasgow – and then selecting those in
which runaway slave advertisements appeared regularly. The Project Team will then survey complete runs of
newspapers containing runaway advertisements, transcribing and where possible digitally photographing every
single advertisement as well as other items related to Africans in Britain. At the same time, the Project Team will
survey complete runs of the longest running and best-established newspapers in rural areas associated with these
larger urban centres, such as Lancashire and Ayrshire. Very few of Britain’s eighteenth century newspapers have
been digitized, so there is no alternative to examining them page by page in their original form (or where possible
on microfilm), and complete runs of over 300 newspapers will be utilized. This is a time-consuming, painstaking
process, but it will enable the Project Team to make this study as comprehensive as possible.
At the same time the Project Team will survey historical work on planters, merchants, doctors, clerics, ships’
officers and others who are known to have brought slaves with them to the British Isles. This will lead to
examination of the surviving records left by these individuals, including such materials as correspondence,
publications and wills and other legal documents. The Project Team will also explore legal and court records in
both England and Scotland, in order to locate examples of masters using the courts to reaffirm legal ownership of
slaves, and slaves seeing to assert freedom. Sections recording the testimony and life stories of runaways, as well
as the accounts of their owners, will be transcribed. Following leads from the runaway advertisements and court
records, project researchers will investigate surviving church records (for baptism, marriage and burial records of
free and enslaved Africans), as well as the correspondence, diaries and other manuscript sources left by plantation
owners, merchants, ship captains and officers, doctors, ministers and other men and women in Britain known to
have owned slaves. Relevant materials will be transcribed.
These materials will be utilised by the Project Team as the primary source material for the most significant and
innovative scholarship yet completed on enslaved and free Africans in Georgian Britain. Both the Post-Doctoral
Researcher and the PhD student will have the freedom to fashion their own research projects, in consultation with
the Lead Investigator. These might include, for example, a study of enslaved domestic and household servants, or
of inter-racial marriages and families, or perhaps of the ways in which running away and freedom for the enslaved
in Britain differed from the experience of runaways in the Caribbean and North America. The Lead Investigator will
utilise the project research in his larger study of runaway slaves in the entire British North Atlantic (including Britain,
West Africa, the Caribbean and North America).
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The project will be undertaken by a team of three people, consisting of a PhD student (full-time, three years), a
Post-Doctoral Researcher (full-time, three years), and the Lead Investigator (33% time, three years). The PhD
student would be recruited by means of a national competition, and would be a person with some expertise
developed in an undergraduate degree (and a taught master’s degree) in either the history of slavery or eighteenthcentury British history. The Post-Doctoral Researcher would also be recruited by means of a national competition,
with a PhD in a field directly related to the work of the project, and with experience of research in eighteenthcentury newspaper, printed and manuscript materials.
Most newspaper research will be undertaken in London (British Library), with additional newspaper and other
research in London, Liverpool, and Bristol. Ten one-month (28 day) research stints will be undertaken in London,
and one-month research stints will take place in both Liverpool and Bristol. Up to six weeks of research will be
undertaken in other locations as needed (e.g. day-trips to Edinburgh, Lancaster, Newcastle, Manchester), although
some restructuring of research priorities may be arranged as needed. These research trips will be designed to
accumulate information, photographing and transcribing as much data as possible, and arranging for microfilm or
photocopies when possible (which will be consulted in Glasgow). Each month of research will require roughly
another month of work in Glasgow inputting, checking and analysing data.
Support staff in the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of
Glasgow will utilise the examples of existing American databases, while working with the Research Team in order
to accommodate the information unique to British runaway advertisements and related sources. The overall project
plan, as well as initial devising of the project database and web resource have been developed in conjunction with
HATII staff, and a designated HATII IT specialist will design and maintain the project database, in collaboration with
the Project Team. The project will be undertaken using Open Source technologies in order to minimise cost and
ensure sustainability, while promoting maintainability and long-term preservation of access by building on the
wealth and breadth of tools and existing experience in the Open Source community. Online elements will use the
LAMP suite of tools – Apache, PHP, MySQL - which are highly regarded and extensively used both commercially
and in similar academic projects. All aspects of the system will be implemented using standard web technologies XHTML/HTML5, CSS 3, JavaScript – which will be validated against W3C standards to ensure interoperability and
accessibility (to appropriate WAI standards) – and the online resources will be encoded using Unicode throughout.
The project database will be modeled on the best online databases of North American runaway slaves, particularly
‘North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements, 1751-1840’
(http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/RAS), which features zoomable digital scans as well as full
search facilities. Nobody has ever collected more than a handful of runaway slave advertisements published in
Georgian Britain, so the result will be a completely original database. Following an industry standard schedule,
backups will be retained on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Additional development backups will include weekly
SQL dumps of each of the deliverable systems, and a dump with each fresh corpus import and each development
milestone. Backups are stored off-site in a dedicated partition of the University's Storage Area Network (SAN),
which in turn has its own backup policy. The University has a policy ensuring indefinite maintenance and availability
of digital resources that result from research projects, which will ensure the ongoing availability of the project’s
online resources beyond the project lifecycle. Copyright clearance where necessary will be sought and recorded in
accordance with international best practice and the College of Arts Research Ethics Policy
(http://www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/arts/research/ethics/ethicspolicy/). The Principal Investigator will meet with the IT
specialist fortnightly during the first six months of the project. Throughout this period the MySQL data-base will be
tested by the Project Team and by the Project Advisors. Once the database has been set, the Project Team will
enter and check data by means of a web portal, allowing easier data entry, checking and a faster transition to a
live, searchable database. During the final year of the project the Project Team will again work closely with the IT
specialist in order to remove any glitches from the database and to ensure it is easy to use.
Africans in Georgian Britain: an example
The potential benefits of the information yielded by this project and its outputs can best be demonstrated by
examples drawn from preliminary exploratory research. From runaway advertisements and related source materials
we can learn, for example, that Scipio – who eloped from his master in London in 1723 – was five-feet six inches
tall, ‘pretty thin’, ‘lame in his feet’ and marked by a scar on his face. (6) When an eighteen-year-old ‘negro woman’
named Ann escaped from her Scottish master, she did so wearing ‘a brass collar about her neck, on which are
engraved these words Gustavus Brown in Dalkeith, his negro.’ (7) Mingo eloped from Thomas Eston, Captain of
the Prince William, in Bristol in 1746. Possessed of ‘a good black complexion’, Mingo’s upper teeth had been
‘scagg’d’ and sharply filed, marking him as a man either born in Africa or raised in West African culture in Britain’s
New World colonies. Eston reported that Mingo spoke “pretty good English, [and] has been in and out of the City
about eight Years.’ (8) Dr. David Dalrymple had brought his slave Black Tom from Jamaica back to Methyl, Fife.
The enslaved man had been baptised by Harry Spence, minister of Wemyss Church, casting off his slave name
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and taking a new one, David Spens (or Spence). Facing a return to slavery in Jamaica, David eloped and took
refuge in the house of a sympathetic fellow parishioner. (9)
In some cases, runaway newspaper advertisements, legal records, church records and other sources yield
remarkably detailed and revealing stories. Robert Shedden had purchased Jamie – then an unskilled boy of sixteen
– from Joseph Hawkins of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, in March 1750, and had then brought him home to Beith
in Ayrshire. There were two reasons for this: Shedden intended to demonstrate the commercial success he had
achieved in Virginia, while having Jamie trained as a carpenter in order to increase his value.
Six years later Shedden decided to sell Jamie for return to Virginia, and it was this decision that prompted the
young man to elope. He was promptly recaptured but escaped again, this time taking refuge in Edinburgh. Like
many escaped slaves, however, a runaway advertisement proved Jamie’s undoing and he was recaptured, and he
died in prison.
The runaway advertisement that led to Jamie Montgomery’s final recapture tells us much about this unfortunate
young man and his unusual story.
'RUN Away from the Subscriber, living near Beith, Shire of Ayr, ONE NEGRO MAN, aged about 22 years, five feet
and a half high or thereby. He is a Virginian born Slave, speaks pretty good English; he has been five years in this
country, and has served sometimes with a joiner; he has a deep Scare above one of his eyes, occasioned by a
stroke of a horse; he also has got with him a Certificate, which calls him Jamie Montgomerie, signed, John
Witherspoone Minister. Whoever takes up the said Run-away, and brings him home, or secures him, and gets
notice to his master, shall have two guineas reward, besides all other charges paid by me ROB. SHEDDEN.' (10)
Jamie had left Virginia when still a teenager, yet despite the climate and his distance from family, friends and a
creolised African American community, Scotland proved hospitable and even welcoming. Jamie’s training by
Robert Morris in Ayrshire had given the young man both a skill and a professional identity, and when he escaped to
Edinburgh in 1756 Jamie found not just sanctuary but employment as a journeyman joiner in the workshop of Peter
Wright. Jamie knew that even as a free man – let alone a slave – in Virginia, he would never enjoy the right to live
and work as a semi-independent craftsman. (11)
Moreover, as Shedden’s runaway advertisement attests, Jamie had secured membership of a white church. John
Witherspoon, future signatory of the Declaration of Independence and president of the College of New Jersey
(Princeton University), had baptised Jamie and given him a certificate attesting to his good Christian conduct.
Ministers usually gave such certificates to parishioners who were moving away, to ease their transition into a new
congregation. Such may well have been the case here, for in arguments before the court in Edinburgh Jamie
confirmed that he had asked for and received Witherspoon’s certificate on 19 April 1756, the day after he had
escaped for the second time and just before he set out to begin a new life in Edinburgh. If Jamie is to be believed
Witherspoon had encouraged and indeed facilitated his bid for freedom. (12)
A great many North American runaways escaped slavery in order to reunite with family members or to find refuge
within welcoming communities of African Americans, whether free or enslaved. Jamie Montgomery did not. By
running away he knew that he was eschewing the opportunity to find solace within African American society and
culture. Jamie appears to have coveted a life in Scotland that would have been denied him in Virginia, a life in
which he might live, labour, worship and perhaps even marry into white society on the basis of the rough equality of
working men. Even the Scottish name of Montgomery may have represented Jamie’s affirmation of the
independence that he desired. In the deed of sale the young enslaved boy purchased by Shedden had been – like
so many of the enslaved – referred to by only a first name, Jamie. Moreover, in the runaway slave advertisement
that he placed in the Edinburgh Evening Courant, Shedden had refused to acknowledge Jamie’s last name,
referring simply to Witherspoon’s certificate “which calls him Jamie Montgomerie [sic].” Although he had been born
an African American slave in colonial Virginia, by the time of his death Jamie Montgomery effectively identified
Scotland as his home.
The Project: significance and outputs
The Project Team’s research outputs will be shaped by the following key research questions:

What were the occupations and social characteristics of the owners of slaves who ran away? Why had they
purchased or brought slaves to Britain?

What were the characteristics of runaway slaves? (including age, sex, occupation, place of birth and
upbringing).

What were the motives for running away?
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
What were the destinations of runaways, and what kinds of lives and futures do they appear to have been
trying to secure?

What can we learn of relations between runaways and white Britons, both those who sought to aid or
shelter runaways, and those who sought to recapture them?

How were British-based runaways different from those in America and the Caribbean?
Much may be gleaned from runaway slave advertisements, from all that is implied about the slave-owner and his
slave in the description of a brass neck collar recording the slaveowner’s name, to what is revealed about the faith
and church membership of a runaway. Historians of slavery in the United States have done a great deal of work on
runaway slave advertisements, aided by the digitization of complete runs of newspapers. (13) However, although
their work furnishes some useful research strategies, British advertisements pose completely different challenges
and will yield quite distinctive results. Runaway advertisements in the Americas were shaped by the fact that it was
often hard to identify a runaway among tens of thousands of enslaved and free blacks, and most runaways sought
to reunite with lost family members, join maroon communities, or to melt away into free black communities. Often
these options were unavailable to British runaways who effectively abandoned their families forever, seeking
freedom within white and not black society. The content and tone of British advertisements were significantly
different from those in America, and these British runaway advertisements have never been located and collated.
Project outputs will include:

an online database of British runaway slave advertisements, and related sources (including church
baptism, marriage and burial records, as well as excerpts from court and associated legal records).

a doctoral dissertation on the lives of enslaved Africans in eighteenth-century Britain.

two articles by a post-doctoral researcher on runaways and resistance to slavery within Britain.

a monograph by the Lead Investigator on runaway slaves throughout the British Atlantic (combining the
project research with his own research on West Africa, the Caribbean and North America.

a conference paper written and presented by each member of the Project research team, exploring
different aspects of the data.

a comprehensive user guide for the database, as well as a series of online explanatory essays, and a
separate section for school teachers and learners, including lesson plans developed in collaboration with
teachers.
There is huge scope for the outputs to be developed by the post-doctoral researcher and the doctoral student, but
precise subjects have not been prescribed in order to give these researchers the latitude to follow the topics and
approaches that most interest them, within the broader confines of the overall project research questions.
Milestones
PhD Student
1.1: Dec. 2014, complete training, and preliminary survey of selected London newspapers
1.2: April 2017, complete location, transcription and digitally photography of all runaway advertisements
1.3: April 2017, complete location, transcription and digitally photography of court and church records
1.4: June 2017, complete data entry
1.5: Spring 2017, complete conference paper
1.6: Aug. 2017, submit dissertation
Post-Doctoral Researcher
2.1: Dec. 2014, complete initial training, and preliminary survey of selected London newspapers
2.2: April 2017, complete location, transcription and digitally photography of all runaway advertisements, data entry
2.3: April 2017, complete location, transcription and digitally photography of court and church records
2.4: April 2017, complete research and transcription of manuscript source materials
2.5: June 2017, complete data entry
2.6: Aug. 2017, completion of database and supporting materials
2.7: Spring 2017, complete conference paper
2.8: Sept. 2016, complete and submit first scholarly article
2.9: July 2016, complete and submit second scholarly article
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HATII support staff
3.1: January 2015, complete initial phase of database development and web-portal for data entry
3.2: Aug. 2017, complete database and public-access web page
Principal Investigator
4.1: Dec. 2014, complete training of PhD student and Post-Doctoral researcher
4.2: April 2017, complete manuscript records research
4.3: Aug. 2017, complete monitoring and checking of all research and data entry
4.4: Aug. 2017, complete regular liaising with HATII support staff
4.5: Aug. 2017, complete supervision of public-access database and supporting materials
4.7: Spring 2017, complete conference paper
4.8: August 2017, complete and submit first draft of monograph
References
(1) See Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1972); Philip D. Morgan, “Colonial South Carolina Runaways: Their Significance for Slave
Culture,” Slavery and Abolition 6 (1985), 57-78; Davd Waldstreicher, “Reading the Runaways: Self Fashioning,
Print Culture, and Confidence in Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Mid-Atlantic,” William and Mary Quarterly 56
(1999), 243-72; Daniel E. Meaders, Dead or Alive: Fugitive Slaves and White Indentured Servants Before 1830
(New York: Garland, 1993); Freddie L. Parker, Running for Freedom: Slave Runaways in North Carolina, 17751840 (New York: Garland, 1993); Graham Russell Hodges and Alan Edward Brown, eds., Pretends to Be Free:
Runaway Slave Advertisements from Colonial and Revolutionary New York and New Jersey (New York: Garland,
1994); Billy G. Smith, “Runaway Slaves in the Mid-Atlantic Region During the Revolutionary Era,” in The
Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement, ed. Ronald
Hoffman and Peter J. Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995), 199-230; John Hope Franklin and
Loren Schweninger, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Billy G.
Smith, “Black Women Who Stole Themselves in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Inequality in Early America, ed.
Carla Gardina Pestana and Sharon V. Salinger (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1999), 134-59;
Jonathan Prude. “To Look upon the ‘Lower Sort’: Runaway Ads and the Appearance of Unfree Laborers in
America, 1750-1800,” Journal of American History 78 (1991), 124-59; Michael P. Johnson, “Runaway Slaves and
the Slave Communities in South Carolina, 1799 to 1830,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d. ser., 38 (1981), 418-41.
(2) Johnson, “Runaway Slaves and the Slave Communities in South Carolina,’ 418; Heuman, “Introduction,’
Special Issue, Out of the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New World,”
Slavery and Abolition, 6 (1985), 2.
(3) An estimated 3,208,600 Africans arrived in English and British colonies between 1607 and 1808, with over
2,498,600 of them between 1701 and 1800. These statistics are based on the ‘estimates’ function of Voyages: The
Transatlantic Slave Trade database,http://www.slavevoyages.org/tast/assessment/estimates.faces accessed 30
December 2013.
(4) Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (London:
Macmillan, 2005); Stephen M. Wise, ‘Though the Heavens May Fall’: The Landmark Trial that Led to the End of
Human Slavery (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2005); John W. Cairns, ‘After Somerset: The Scottish
Experience,’ Journal of Legal History, 33 (2012), 291-312; Jerome Nadelhaft, ‘The Somerset Case and Slavery:
Myth, Reality, and Repercussions,’ Journal of Negro History, 51 (1966), 193–208; Cassandra Pybus, Epic
Journeys of Freedom: Runaway Slaves of the American Revolution and their Global Quest for Liberty (Boston:
Beacon Press, 2006); Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, The Slaves and the American Revolution
(London: BBC Books, 2005); Christopher Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2006).
(5) Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom, 82-3. Pybus examines the period during and after the American War for
Independence in the 1770s and 1780s.
(6) Daily Courant (London), 20 May 1723.
(7) Runaway slave advertisement, Edinburgh Evening Courant (Edinburgh), 7 March 1721.
(8) Runaway slave advertisement, Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal (Bristol), 15 November 1746.
(9) Dalrymple v Spens and Henderson (1770), Court of Sessions, National Archives of Scotland, CS236/D/4/3 box
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104. Spens’ baptism on 1 September 1769 is recorded in the parish registers at the General Register Office of
Scotland (GROS ref. 459/00/0003).
(10) Edinburgh Evening Courant (Edinburgh), 4 May 1756.
(11) Answers for James Montgomery to the Petition of Robert Shedden, 3, manuscript in the National Archives of
Scotland, CS 234/S/3/12.
(12) Memorial for James Montgomery – Sheddan; Memorial for Robert Sheddan of Morrice-hill, late Merchant in
Glasgow (9 July 1756), 2, Advocates Library, Session Papers, Campbell’s Collection, V.
(13) Examples of digitized collections of American runaway slave advertisements include ‘The Geography of
Slavery in Virginia’, an online database of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Virginia runaway advertisements
(http://www2.vcdh.virginia.edu/gos/); ‘North Carolina Runaway Slave Advertisements, 1751-1840,’
(http://libcdm1.uncg.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/RAS); ‘Documenting Runaway Slaves’, an online database of
runaway advertisements from Arkansas, Mississippi and Jamaica (http://aquila.usm.edu/drs/); and ‘Runaway Slave
Ads, Baltimore County, Maryland, 1842-1863,’ (http://www.afrigeneas.com/library/runaway_ads/balt-intro.html).
Examples of published collections of runaway slave advertisements include Billy G. Smith and Richard Wojtowicz,
eds., Blacks Who Stole Themselves: Advertisements for Runaways in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 1728-1790
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989); Lathan A. Windley, Runaway Slave Advertisements: A
Documentary History From the 1730s to 1790, 4 vols. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983).
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Proposal Summary
Abstract
This project will explore the little-known lives of African slaves in eighteenth-century Britain, focusing on those who
sought to escape their bondage. Analyzing the detailed advertisements placed by slave- owners seeking to
recover their runaway slaves, and utilizing related legal and manuscript sources, the Lead Investigator, a postdoctoral researcher and a doctoral student will significantly expand our knowledge of Britain’s enslaved Africans.
This analysis will investigate how widespread slavery was, and show how runaways sought to create new lives in
British society. Publications will be supplemented by a publicly accessible database of runaway advertisements
from newspapers all over Britain.
Context
The historical context for this project is of a society undergoing dramatic social and political changes, as the first
British Empire took shape, the industrial revolution gathered pace, and Britain developed into the world’s leading
economic and military power. In the wake of the 2007 bicentennial of the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade,
museums and galleries in Liverpool, Bristol, London and elsewhere have raised awareness of how eighteenthcentury Britain profited from slavery. Yet slavery continues to be treated as a remote institution, existing on ships
crossing from Africa to the Caribbean and on New World plantations. Little scholarly work has been done on
slaves who lived in Georgian Britain, and this project will unite the contexts and historiographies of eighteenthcentury Britain and of slavery in Britain’s colonies.
The contemporary context is of an early twenty-first century multiracial British society, with a growing awareness of
the ways in which different races contribute to and in turn are shaped by British society. This project will illustrate
the long-term historical context for multi-racial British society, illuminating the ways that British and African ideas of
freedom and liberty came together in the attempts of enslaved Africans to escape bondage.
The Lead Investigator has twenty-five years of experience working on the history of subaltern peoples in the early
modern British Atlantic World, and fifteen years focusing on enslaved peoples including runaways. His work on the
development of plantation slavery has received major funding from the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust,
and has resulted in a major monograph (2013) as well as conference papers and published essays.
Objectives
Project objectives will be informed by the following core research questions:
(a) What were the characteristics of runaway slaves?
(b) What were the motives for running away?
(c) What kinds of Britons aided runaways?
(d) What kinds of lives and futures do runaways appear to have been trying to secure?
The objectives of this Project include:

location, transcription and digitisation of as many runaway slave advertisements as possible, as well as
supporting information from legal, church and other sources

creation of an online searchable database of runaway slave advertisements and other relevant sources,
with supporting materials to enhance database accessibility and utility

analysis of data to answer core project research questions
Outcomes will include three conference papers; two scholarly articles; a doctoral dissertation; and a scholarly
monograph.
Significance and originality
This project will build upon existing American and Caribbean scholarship which has employed runaway slave
advertisements and related materials to inform understanding of the lives and social and cultural characteristics of
runaways. This can include information about clothing (sometimes modified or combined in ways that demonstrate
a particular aesthetic sensibility); language or dialect; posture, gestures and mannerisms; bodily features and
scars (including marks of punishment, as well as African cultural features such as hair styles, earrings and jewelry,
and ritual scarification); religion; and more intangible characteristics, such as the ways in which runaways were
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recorded by their owners as having interacted with whites, whether deferentially or defiantly.
This project will result in the most significant work to date on enslaved and free Africans in Georgian Britain. It will
create a database which will make primary source materials freely and easily available in a fully searchable format,
enabling further research by scholars, students, school teachers and learners, genealogists and the public.
Africans, many of them enslaved, were the largest non-European group present in eighteenth-century England
and Scotland, yet they have largely disappeared from the historical record: this project will go far in correcting this
historical lacuna.
Method
Core research methods
(i) read complete runs of newspapers, and locate runaway slave advertisements
(ii) transcribe and digitally copy runaway advertisements
(iii) research printed and manuscript records of planters, overseers, merchants and doctors for information about
enslaved Africans brought back to Britain
(iv) research court records of cases in which masters sought to re-establish ownership of recaptured runaway
slaves
(v) enter data into project database
(vi) analysis of data
All transcribed and digitized materials will be entered into the project database (MySQL), allowing full searches
and cross-referencing. Once the database has been set, the Project Team will enter and check data by means of a
web portal, allowing easier data entry, checking and a faster transition to a publicly accessible live, searchable
database. This public database, which will feature ‘zoomable’ digital images of some original advertisements and
documents, will allow detailed searching of runaway slaves in Georgian Britain.
Directly funded staff
The Lead Investigator, the Post-Doctoral Researcher and the PhD Student will collectively create the database,
developing a shared understanding of the common methodology for data recording and entry. Thereafter, the
Post-Doctoral Research and PhD Student will have responsibility for (i) and (ii), with the Lead Investigator regularly
checking and discussing data, and fine-tuning of the database. The Lead Investigator and Post-Doctoral
Researcher will undertake (iii) and (iv), and all staff will undertake (v). Support staff from HATII will provide
technical support for the creation and maintenance of project database, and its conversion into a publicly
accessible web-based form.
Project Management
The Principal Investigator will direct research towards answering the key research questions, and creating the
publicly accessible web-based resource. He will supervise the Post-Doctoral Researcher and they will together cosupervise the PhD Student. When away undertaking research, both the Post-Doctoral Researcher and the PhD
Student will have weekly skype project discussions with the Principal Investigator. Project Meetings of all research
staff, HATII technical support staff, and the Steering Committee will be held in September, January and May of
each year. Projector Advisors will be consulted via email, and by means of skype six-monthly conversations.
Why the Leverhulme Trust?
I am applying to the Leverhulme Trust because of its commitment to support innovative research with both innate
and more far-reaching significance. This project will dramatically expand the horizons of eighteenth-century British
history, enhancing our understanding of today’s multi-racial British society in historical context. Combining
historical research with digital humanities, the project will produce both academic outputs and a publicly available
web-based resource with enormous significance for our understanding not just of race and slavery in Georgian
Britain, but also of the historical context for our present-day multi-racial British identity.
By discovering the stories of enslaved Africans who sought to escape bondage and create new lives for
themselves, the project will expand understanding of how race worked and was experienced in eighteenth-century
Britain, while simultaneously providing a valuable historical context for contemporary debates about British multiracial identity. The project will enable us to rethink the British relationship with racial slavery, capturing in a
domestic British context the struggles of the enslaved for liberty, the Britons who aided and sheltered them, and
the ways in which slave-owners sought to protect ownership of their human property. The project will give local
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contexts and significance to the national story of slavery and abolition, giving a human face to enslavement and
freedom from Perthshire to Kent.
I have been hampered in advancing this new project by my work preparing the History REF2014 submission;
serving on the panel preparing all arts and humanities subjects at Glasgow University for the REF; my duties as
Research Convenor for History; my work as Internationalisation Officer for the School of Humanities; and a full
undergraduate and postgraduate teaching load.
Staff Schedule – Principal Applicant
Total time to be spent on the project
(hours per week)
13
Distribution of work:
a) Research Activity
b) Authorship
c) Publication
(a) research activity

train Post-Doctoral Researcher and PhD student

undertake initial research trips with Post-Doctoral Researcher and PhD student

coordinate with support staff from the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII)
in creation and online publication of project database

undertake research into manuscript sources
(b) authorship

one conference paper based on project research

complete research and first draft of monograph
(c) publication

project database

monograph to be published within two years of conclusion of project

support Post-Doctoral Researcher and PhD student in their publications
Justification of replacement teaching: (If Applicable)
The Lead Investigator’s contractual research time will be utilized in researching and writing his monograph on
runaway slaves in the British Atlantic World, providing an international context for the project research.
Consequently, the Lead Investigator requires teaching relief in order to take on, participate in and supervise
project work. A heavy load of undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and supervision, course convening, and
administrative responsibilities make teaching relief essential. This will enable the Lead Investigator to undertake
selected project research, train and supervise the Post-Doctoral Researcher and PhD student, and directly
supervise the creation and publication of the database.
Recent and relevant publications
BOOKS
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ESSAYS
Antonio Salas, Vincent A Macaulay, and Yannis P Pitsiladis. Slavery and Abolition, 34 (2013), 376-400.
LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS
CV
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Degree/Qualifications
Doctoral Degrees
Former Employment
E
Schedule
Research Assistant 1: (Name Unknown)
Percentage of time devoted to the project (%): 100
Distribution of work
a) Research Activity
b) Authorship
c) Publication
(a) research activity

after initial training, research in libraries and archives to locate, transcribe and digitally photograph
runaway slave advertisements and related materials

entry of materials into project database, and in second and third years shared responsibility with Lead
Investigator for liaison with Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute staff in creation
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and online publication of project database

preparation of supporting and explanatory materials for project database and webpage
(b) authorship

one conference paper based on project research

two articles for scholarly journals
(c) publication

project database

two articles in scholarly journals
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PhD Student 1: (Name Unknown)
Percentage of time devoted to the project (%): 100
Distribution of work
a) Research Activity
b) Authorship
c) Publication
(a) research activity

after initial training, research in libraries and archives to locate, transcribe and digitally photograph
runaway slave advertisements and related materials

entry of materials into project database

preparation of supporting and explanatory materials for project database and webpage
(b) authorship

one conference paper based on project research
(c) publication

project database

PhD dissertation
Details of PhD studentship
The PhD student will be selected by national competition. Essential criteria will be an excellent undergraduate
degree with some undergraduate research experience in either the history of slavery or eighteenth-century
British history. Although not essential, a taught postgraduate degree with advanced research and writing in
one of these areas will be highly desirable. Some experience of databases will also be desirable, although not
essential.
The University of Glasgow’s Researcher Development programme, as well as the subject-specific training
available to PhD students in History will provide the PhD student with essential training and experience in
historical research, database development and management, and in writing and publication. The Lead
Investigator will provide initial guidance and training in using eighteenth-century newspapers and other
records, and in the proper recording of data, and over time the PhD student will become a full contributing
member of the research team.
The PhD student’s work will be prescribed in the sense that location of runaway slave advertisements and
related material in newspapers will constitute the bulk of the student’s research. However, the student will be
able to fashion the particular research topic for her or his dissertation, building on the research undertaken for
the project as a whole. Thus, the student might develop a dissertation on enslaved domestic servants in
Georgian Britain, or on religion and church membership among enslaved runaways, or perhaps on the
creation of families by runaway slaves in Britain. There are a large number of potential topics, and the PhD
student will be able to research and write a highly original dissertation on a very little-studied topic.
Consequently, the PhD student will develop significant expertise in an area of increasing historical interest and
significance, as demonstrated by the relatively new museums and exhibits related to plantation slavery and the
transatlantic slave trade in Liverpool, London and Bristol.
In addition to the dissertation, the PhD student will share authorship of the project database and supporting
materials. This will result in the PhD student establishing a national and international profile as a key member
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of the first research team to explore enslaved and runaway Britons in eighteenth-century Britain.
Justification for need of studentship
This project depends upon a great deal of intensive archival research, pouring over complete runs of hundreds
of English and Scottish newspapers published during the first three-quarters of the eighteenth century.
Virtually none of these newspapers have been digitized, meaning that this research cannot be done
electronically with keyword searching of databases, as is possible for eighteenth century American
newspapers (which is why so many extensive databases of runaway slave advertisements have been created
in the United States). The runaway slave advertisements and related materials about enslaved Africans
located in newspapers will then be transcribed and entered into the project database, and digital copies will be
made whenever possible.
The PhD student will be vital to the successful completion of this project, sharing with the Post-Doctoral
Researcher the bulk of the research into newspapers. The PhD student will also share responsibility for entry
of this material into the project database, and its preparation for online publication, along with completion of all
necessary explanatory and supporting materials.
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Steering Committee/Advisors
Steering Committee/Advisors
STEERING COMMITTEE
The Project Steering Committee will by comprised of people from within the University of Glasgow or who live and
work close to the city. Meeting quarterly during the life of the project, the Committee will provide both practical and
financial guidance on the organisation of the project and the realisation of its objectives, as well as some specialist
knowledge of the subject. Members of the Project Steering Committee have been selected in order to bring expert
knowledge of the management of a large project and the production of an associated database; subject knowledge
relevant to the research; experience of financial administration of large research grants; technical knowledge of the
software and database development; and knowledge of how school teachers and learners and the public as a
whole might utilise the completed database.
A member of staff from the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute, University of Glasgow,
with responsibility for the creation and long-term preservation of the online database and resources.
ADVISORS
The project will also rely on external advisors. These have been selected for their expert knowledge of the source
materials and the topics covered by this project. Utilising video-conferencing technology, the project team will
consult with these advisors on a regular basis.
Current Grant Report
Current Grant Report
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Finance
Salary Budget
Staff Type:Research assistant
Percentage Of Time Spent On The Project:100
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Scale Point
Basic Salary
Local Allowance
National Insurance
Superannuation
Overall Total
Staff Type:
Percentage Of Time Spent By This Applicant On The Project:
Percentage Of Replacement Teaching Requested Over The Total Grant Period:
Applicant:(Lead Applicant)
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Scale Point
Basic Salary
Local Allowance
National Insurance
Superannuation
Overall Total
Staff Type:PhD student fee/maintenance
Percentage Of Time Spent On The Project:100
Justification:The PhD student will participate in the research for this project, compiling data about Africans in
Britain from newspapers, legal and other sources, both in archives elsewhere and at Glasgow using microfilmed
records. The Lead Investigator will supervise this research, with more immediate support from the research
assistant. The PhD student will develop a dissertation on an aspect of the project, to be supervised by the Lead
Investigator. The topic will not be prescribed, thus allowing for individual research initiative by the student resulting
in a major research output.
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Fees
Maintenance
Overall Total
Researcher Salary Subtotal
Other Salary Subtotal
Salary Grand Total
Associated Costs
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Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Total
Website
Costs for development of
data set of runaway slave
advertisements and
mounting them on a
custom-made website,
allowing users to freely
access and search the
complete set on British
runaway slave
advertisements. Digital
scans of as many
advertisements as possible
will be included.
Accommodation
Accommodation
Subsistence
Subsistence
Travel
Travel
Computing
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Consumables
Other Research Expenses
Total
Budget Summary
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Researcher Total
Other Salary Total
Associated Costs
Overall Totals
Grand Total
£291,367
Institutional Approver
I confirm on behalf of the Principal Applicant’s institution that:



we agree with the budget as laid out in this application;
we have fully read and approve of this application and
we understand that agreement to the Trust’s terms and conditions will be requested following the offer of a
grant.
Name
Position
Email
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