Part 1 of 2
ONE day in 1767, Granville Sharp received a letter from a Jonathan Strong, saying he was in jail and needed help. Unable to put a face to the name, Sharp made enquiries at the jail. When he was told no such person existed, he demanded to check every inmate himself.
As soon as he laid eyes on him, he recognised Jonathan as a young African whom Sharp’s brother William, a surgeon, had rescued from the streets two years before, lame and nearly blind. The brothers had paid for treatment at St Bartholomew’s, and then obtained a place for Jonathan at a pharmacy.
Jonathan now explained that he had been helping his employer’s wife into her carriage, when by dreadful chance his former master, a Barbados lawyer called David Lisle who happened to be visiting London, had recognised him, and claimed him as a runaway.
So it was that Jonathan was lying in a city jail, waiting to be shipped off to the West Indies.
Précis
Granville Sharp and his brother took Jonathan Strong, an African, off the streets of London and found a job for him. Two years later, Jonathan was spotted by a former slave-master and claimed as a runaway slave, so he wrote to Granville from jail asking for help. (47 / 60 words)
Part Two
MR Lisle’s sense of loss must have clouded his memory.
Strong was no runaway. Lisle had thrown him out, after beating him so badly that he could no longer work; if anything really offended him it was the sight of Jonathan looking so fit. Indeed, even as Jonathan languished in jail, Lisle hurriedly sold him to a Mr Kerr for £30.
Unable to find a lawyer to plead Jonathan’s cause, Sharp researched it himself, and his pamphlet planted sufficient doubt in legal minds to discourage Kerr from going to court straightaway.
Indeed, two years and a rather melodramatic challenge to a duel later (Sharp replied that Kerr would receive ‘satisfaction’ in the courts), the claims of ownership were suddenly dropped.
Kerr was fined £200 for wasting the court’s time, and Jonathan was set free. Admittedly Sharp’s claim, that slavery was so alien to British values that ‘owners’ had no rights here, had not yet come before a judge. But that day was drawing nearer.
Précis
Granville Sharp took Jonathan’s case on himself, researching his legal position. However, his claim that slave owners had no rights in England was not put to the test, as Jonathan’s ‘owner’ backed down in the face of Granville’s determination, and dropped the case. (43 / 60 words)