Social Reformer, Politician. Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton received notoriety as an English politician in the early 19th century. He supported the abolition of slavery in all the British colonies and was partly responsible for the Abolition Act of August 28, 1833. Starting in 1823, he was a member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. He published in 1839 “The African Slave Trade and Its Remedy,” which inspired the British government to send an expedition to Africa of men to the Niger River Delta in 1841, in hope of stopping the slave trade there. Many of the men in the expedition, who were mainly Christians doing missionary work, died of a fever, thus this campaign failed. On July 30, 1840 Buxton was created a Baronet by Queen Victoria. He supported reforms in the English prison system, and published “Inquiry into Prison Discipline” in 1819, which was based on his inspection of Newgate Prison in London. His book was published not only in the British Isles but in Europe and translated into French. In May of 1807, he married Hannah Gurney, the sister of Elizabeth Fry, noted prison reformer. Born the son of a kind, wealthy estate owner, he was sent to boarding school at Kingston-upon-Thames at the age of four and half years old. The poorly managed school had no heat for the students and little food and he became ill. After that experience, he never embraced school, thus leaving formal schooling at age fifteen. When he was six years old, his father died, and he was befriended by the estate’s gamekeeper, who taught him about the country-life style of hunting for game and fishing. He became an excellent gunman, horseman and a lover of dogs. In 1824 he was among the 22 founding members of Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Britain. As a Quaker, his mother impressed on her children the equality of all people and the need to care for others. She was against slavery, which she instilled in her son. Although a member of the Church of England, he attended Quaker meetings with his mother and wife. In 1811 he was made a partner in a brewery, which was renamed Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Company, and later he was the only owner. He grew into a huge, tall man, becoming six-foot four inches tall. He went to study with a tutor in Donnybrook, Ireland for one year, before entering with the highest honors to Trinity College, Dublin, and graduating with honors in history. A speech that he made in November of 1816 at the Mansion House to solicit funds for starving weavers caused him to realize that he needed to serve in Parliament. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1818. In Parliament, he voted his beliefs and not down party lines, which upset his colleagues. He held fast to his antislavery viewpoints and caring for the poor. At one point, he cheered so loudly after a law was passed to end apprenticeship of former slaves that he was forcibly removed from Parliament. He was against capital punishment and the Hindu practice in India of burning women, who had become newly widowed. He published numerous pamphlets to educate the public about the need to abolish slavery. He was the father of eleven children, but with no control of what is now known as “childhood disease,” his oldest son and three younger daughters died within weeks in April of 1820 from measles and whooping cough. Another son died at age seventeen from tuberculous, and yet another child died before his death. Two of his remaining sons married into the Gurney family. Even on his deathbed, he was concern about the poor villagers not having food, and he wanted to see them walking toward their homes with pots of steaming soup for supper. He never fully recovered from the death of all those men who went to Africa on the expedition, becoming withdrawn in grief, and had a heart attack within a few years. He died at his home, North-Repps Hall. After his death, Prince Albert solicited the public, mainly in Africa, for a statue of Buxton to be placed near the monument of William Wiberforce in the north transept of Westminister Abbey. A bust of him by John Bell was placed in St. George’s Church in Sierra Leone. An image of him wearing glasses was printed on the English five-pound note between 2002 and 2017. A permanent memorial to him was unveiled in 2017 on Bincleaves Green in Weymouth in Dorset.