📍Wilberforce House, 25 High Street, Hull HU1 1NQ, UK
1759 – 1768“I was born in this merchant's house on the High Street in Hull in 1759, in a grand brick mansion beside the River Hull where ships unloaded their cargoes. My grandfather and father had made the family's fortune in the Baltic trade, and the house was both our home and the centre of the family business, with warehouses and a garden running down to the water. I was a small, sickly child, but lively, clever and blessed with a beautiful speaking voice. I went to Hull Grammar School, where the headmaster was Joseph Milner, whose brother Isaac would later help guide my faith. When I was eight, my father died, and I was sent to live with my uncle and aunt in Wimbledon. They were devout evangelicals, friends of John Newton, the former slave-ship captain turned clergyman, and their faith deeply impressed me. My mother and grandfather, alarmed that I was becoming a Methodist, brought me home to Hull, where I went to school at Pocklington and enjoyed the theatre, cards and parties of the town's merchant society. I went to Cambridge, where I befriended William Pitt, and at twenty-one I was elected Member of Parliament for Hull. A few years later I experienced a religious conversion and, encouraged by Newton and others, devoted myself to ending the slave trade. After twenty years of struggle, Parliament abolished the British slave trade in 1807, and slavery itself was ended across the empire in 1833. Today the house where I was born is the Wilberforce House Museum, telling the story of slavery and the long fight for freedom.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today