Rare Books @ NLS

We recently bought an abolitionist broadside printed in Haddington, East Lothian, in 1814 – seven years after the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed. It is simply entitled Slave Trade. Beneath the title is a telling woodcut  followed by an abolitionist poem:

 

The inhabitants of Dunbar, a coastal town in East Lothian, had met in June 1814 to discuss the fact that slavery was still ongoing. They were appalled at this disgraceful state of affairs and resolved to do something about it.  The broadside is the outcome of their discussions.

It calls for everybody in and around Dunbar who is opposed to “the revival of the bloody traffic” to come forward and sign a petition to both Houses of Parliament.  This petition is to ask MPs and Lords to use their influence so that the slave trade may be universally abolished. The petition has already been drawn up and is available in Dunbar Council House.

Further reading:

On our website: resources for Scotland and the Slave Trade

I was away at the weekend so have only just discovered that our website The Word On The Street, devoted to news broadsides, has been in the news itself thanks to the Edinburgh Science Festival.

Martin Belam, The Guardian’s Information Architect, was speaking on a panel about Journalism in the Digital Age, in which he traced the journey of news media from the first printed broadsides to today’s 24-hour array of multimedia journalism. And our Word on the Street site was a handy source for his coverage of the three hundred years where the broadside was the dominant medium for news stories to reach a mass audience.

You can read Martin’s presentation on the Inside Guardian blog, and also read the additional piece he wrote for their local Edinburgh blog.

The Word on the Street site has been one of our most popular web features since it was launched, and it’s great to see it appreciated. As Martin says in his blog, we also have a large collection of print news going back to the earliest Scottish newspapers.

Martin Belam says his favourite broadside is the one which tells the story of the mermaid spotted by a shipwrecked Scottish merchant off the coast of Inverness around 1760. Read the full story on the Word on the Street site.