Frederick Douglass in Edinburgh
Frederick Douglass was one of the most prominent African American abolitionist voices of the nineteenth century, and many people will be familiar with his powerful speeches denouncing the horrors of slavery. Fewer people are aware that he made several visits to Edinburgh and that you can still find numerous places in the city where he made public speeches or visited local abolitionists.
Douglass was born into chattel slavery on a plantation in Maryland in 1818 and lived the first twenty years of his life as an enslaved person, being moved between different plantations and households. He was able to escape on the 3rd of September 1838 with the support of Anna Murray, a free Black woman in Baltimore who would later become his wife. “Douglass” is the surname that Frederick chose for himself when he and Anna married, taking it from the name of a character in Walter Scott’s The Lady of the Lake. He couldn’t have known when he picked it that he would soon be walking past the monument to Scott in Edinburgh, describing it amongst the “architectural beauties” that he admired in the city!
Frederick Douglass circa 1879. Image: public domain
After escaping to freedom, Douglass began campaigning for abolition, appearing at anti-slavery events and captivating people with his speeches. His autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, was published in 1845 and led to him becoming more widely known. Because he had escaped from the household of Hugh Auld, who still viewed Douglass as his “property”, there were fears that his higher profile could lead to an attempt to kidnap him and return him to slavery. It seemed like the perfect time to embark on a transatlantic speaking tour, and that’s what brought Frederick Douglass to Edinburgh for the first time in 1846.
Scotland in general and Edinburgh specifically both participated in and benefited from the slave trade throughout the British Empire (see here for more information about Edinburgh’s connections to slavery), but by the 1840s the country was also home to a thriving abolition movement. Although slavery had been legally abolished throughout the empire in 1834, Britain still had many cultural and commercial links to the United States, where it continued. These kinds of connections were often the focus of abolitionist campaigning on these shores, which is one of the reasons that Douglass found so many willing audiences during his two-year-long trip to Britain and Ireland. To find out more about his time in Edinburgh, let’s look at just four of the many places in the city where Douglass stayed, spoke and visited.
33 Gilmore Place
33 Gilmore Place, Edinburgh. The plaque above the door commemorates Frederick Douglass’ time here. Image: my own
While travelling in the British Isles, Frederick Douglass was partly based at 33 Gilmore Place as “Scotland’s anti-slavery agent”. The street is just round the corner from where I went to high school, but I never knew that someone so important had lived here until recently. Nowadays, Douglass’ time here is commemorated with a plaque on the building and a mural further along the road.
He spoke highly of Edinburgh, describing how the architecture and natural beauty gave it “advantages over any city I have ever visited”. As well as falling for the city of Edinburgh – as so many visitors have before and since! – Douglass also felt comfortable here as a Black man, in contrast with his experiences at home. He wrote: “Everything is so different here from what I have been accustomed to in the United States. No insults to encounter – no prejudice to encounter, but all is smooth. I am treated as a man and equal brother. My color, instead of being a barrier to social equality, is not thought of as such.” Another passage speaks of how he could “enjoy every thing here which may be enjoyed by those of a paler hue – no distinction here”. Of course, Edinburgh in the 1840s was not a post-racial paradise – many people had probably never met a Black person before – but it seems as if Frederick Douglass found welcoming and enjoyable company during his visits here.
The mural of Frederick Douglass by TrenchOne. Image: my own
The Calton Convening Rooms
The former Calton Convening Rooms, where Frederick Douglass spoke in 1846. Image: my own.
Now home to a restaurant called Howie’s, this building was once the Calton Convening Rooms. On the 1st of May 1846 it played host to a public breakfast in honour of Frederick Douglass and other anti-slavery campaigners, which according to Douglass’ own account was attended by “a large number of the well-known and most influential friends of the cause of abolition in Edinburgh”. Douglass himself addressed the meeting and apparently “especially enchained the attention of the audience” with his own stories and those of other enslaved people. This was just one of dozens, if not hundreds, of speeches he would make in Edinburgh and across Scotland.
Right after this breakfast, Douglass also addressed a meeting of the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society. He was friends with the society’s secretary, Eliza Wigham, and other abolitionists in her family. The meeting unanimously passed a resolution after his speech, committing the society to “renewed exertions” and expressing “earnest sympathy with the friends from America”.
Eliza Wigham, left, and Jane Wigham, right, with fellow abolitionist Mary Estlin. Image: public domain
The Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society was among several such groups at the time that campaigned for an immediate end to slavery, as opposed to the gradual winding down favoured by less radical campaigners. At certain points, the Society even no-platformed speakers from other abolitionist campaigns that advocated the gradual approach. Eliza Wigham and her stepmother Jane were both key forces within the Edinburgh Ladies’ Emancipation Society and spent decades campaigning for the freedom and rights of enslaved people.
As well as her friendship with Frederick Douglass, Eliza also corresponded with activists along the Underground Railroad in the US and sent money to support enslaved people escaping to Canada. Although we often think of Victorian women as removed from politics, in fact there were many like Eliza and Jane who lent their time, money and work to campaigns from abolition to women’s rights and social justice. The very fact that they were excluded from the formal world of politics often gave them the power to be more radical in their demands than the men in parliament.
5 South Gray Street
This was the home of the Wighams, who were all abolitionists. In fact, Jane Wigham, née Smeal, had been active in abolitionist campaigning since long before she married John Wigham in 1840, and her brother William founded the Glasgow Anti-Slavery Society in 1822. John Wigham was also an abolitionist in his own right and was part of the Edinburgh Emancipation Society at the time of Frederick Douglass’ visits to Edinburgh (although the men’s group was somewhat less radical than the women’s). The family were Quakers, a denomination that has often been involved with peace and social justice campaigns throughout its history, and in the later part of the nineteenth century the Wigham women would turn their efforts to campaigning for equal suffrage and other women’s rights issues.
Although we don’t know for certain that Frederick Douglass visited this address, it seems more than likely that he would have been invited to spend time at the Wighams’ home. He certainly worked with a wide range of abolitionists in Edinburgh and would often attend dinners or social engagements at their houses. I would love to have been a fly on the wall as such an interesting group of people swapped stories at the table!
Salisbury Crags
The towering cliffs of Salisbury Crags were the site of one of the more theatrical moments of Frederick Douglass’ visits to Edinburgh. At the time, the Free Church of Scotland was one of the major focal points of abolitionist campaigning here. The church had been founded in 1843 after a denominational schism, and it had been receiving funding from pro-slavery supporters in the United States. During his visits here, Douglass frequently spoke in support of the campaign to force the Free Church to return this money. In April 1846, he wrote in a letter that “Scotland is all in a blaze of antislavery excitement – in consequence of our exposures of the proslavery conduct of the Free Church of Scotland”.
Salisbury Crags in Holyrood Park. Image: my own
The following month, British campaigner George Thompson exhorted audiences – perhaps rhetorically, perhaps seriously – to carve the campaign slogan “Send Back the Money” into Salisbury Crags and other prominent locations. This particular form of direct action may have appealed to Frederick Douglass, because according to a newspaper report he went “with spade in hand … and began to carve this vulgar cry in graceful characters”. He was reportedly in the company of “two ladies belonging to the Society of Friends”, which is another name for the Quakers, so it is very plausible that these women could be Eliza and Jane Wigham.
There is some debate about whether this incident really occurred, because (despite how incredibly cool this sounds to us nowadays!) the newspaper story in its 1846 context might have been intended to mock Frederick Douglass and the campaign in general. Regardless of the truth, I love the idea that we could have had an enduring anti-slavery slogan carved by Douglass’ own hand in such a prominent spot.
These are just a handful of the places in Edinburgh associated with Frederick Douglass, and there are many more both here and across Scotland. If you’re interested in exploring more in the city, check out this interactive map from the National Library of Scotland. You can also learn more about Douglass’ time in other parts of Scotland here. If you’d like to find out more about Scottish Black history in general, you can find blogs on a range of topics on the Historic Environment Scotland website.
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