#15139, Thomas Fowell BUXTON MP

One of Buxton's first jobs was at the Trueman and Hanbury Black Eagle Brewery in Spitalfields, London.  Within 3 years he had become a partner and had brought in a teacher so that all the employees could learn to read and write.  In 1814 he inherited Belfield House from his grandmother Sarah Buxton.  He rented it out to his uncle Charles Buxton.

He undertook much philanthropic work on behalf of poor silk weavers in Spittlefields, which resulted in his being noticed by William Wilberforce (#15010).  In 1818, having visited Newgate Prison with his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Fry (#15031) he published An Inquiry into Prison Discipline and was elected MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis.  His interest in prison and criminal law reform encouraged him to speak in Parliament against the deplorable conditions on the convict ships bound for Australia.  With others he presented a bill in Parliament to mitigate the sentence of death for crimes such as forgery to transportation.  Crimes punishable by death were reduced eventually from 230 to 8.  Buxton assumed leadership of the abolitionists in Parliament, taking over from William Wilberforce which gave him the opportunity to steer the famous 1833 Abolition of Slavery Bill through Parliament.  It came into force the following year.

Buxton was involved in many other issues, amongst them the abolition in India of suttee, a practice requiring widows to be burned alive on their husband's funeral pyres and his chairmanship of the Aborigenes Committee in Parliament which helped ensure the rights of all indigenous peoples across the empire.  Later in life he had an audience with Pope Gregory XVI in Rome and was created a baronet of "Belfield in the County of Dorset and Runton in the County of Norfolk."  He died a few years later.