The slave trade in Liverpool reached its peak during the late eighteenth century, with many Liverpool merchants and businessmen taking part in what they saw as just another legitimate business - making an acceptable profit from slavery. Liverpool became dominant in the trade. Freemasonry was also popular in Liverpool at this time with around ten lodges, both Antient and Modern, emerging in the port during the closing decades of the eighteenth century supplying international networking opportunities for local merchants and businessmen.
    Complete lodge membership lists are rare from this period, but there is a surviving list containing the names of members and their occupations from one particular ‘Modern’ lodge in Liverpool, the Merchants Lodge, from 1789. This list is fascinating, not only because it is a rare example of the make-up of a lodge from this period, but because it reveals a number of local Freemasons who were deeply involved in local politics, the slave trade, and privateering.
    One of the Lodge’s founders was Thomas Golightly, who was listed in the Company of Merchants, trading to Africa from the port of Liverpool. Golightly was mainly a wine merchant and had powerful political connections in Liverpool, being an associate of erstwhile Mayor of Liverpool and fellow slave trader, Peter Baker. Golightly continued to trade in slaves up until its abolition in 1807, and served as Mayor himself in 1772-3. Roger Leigh, another member of the Lodge, was a local Liverpool businessman and politician who owned a number of slave ships, including the Tuton, Sundet and the Pilgrim.
    Freemason Thomas Barton - whose brother William served as Mayor of Liverpool - was listed as a ‘gentleman’ in the lodge list, yet he also ventured into the slave trade, owning the slave ships Elizabeth and Will. The Will was captained by the infamous eccentric, Hugh Crow, and though the ship is listed in 1799 as being owned by Barton, Crow mentions in his memoirs that it was owned by William Aspinall, the brother of Freemason, John Aspinall.
    Hugh Crow gives an insight as to how he felt about the slave trade at the time. Witnessing the slaves in the West Indian ports as well dressed and domesticated servants, he commented how lucky they were in comparison to the primitive and dangerous life experienced by the negroes in Africa. Support for the slave trade also came from Freemason James Boswell, who in his Life of Johnson, wrote that the slave trade was ‘God’s will’ and that the merchants and plantation owners would lose their livelihood if abolition was to take place. Another Freemason on the list, William Dennison, was engaged in privateering, having a share in the Enterprise, the ship actively marauding French vessels.
    Thomas Barton too had ventured into privateering, owning the Harriet, which took the French brig L’Agreable, the ship and its cargo being sold through the office of local broker and Freemason, William Ewart, another member of the Merchants Lodge. Ewart was an associate of John Gladstone, the father of the future Liberal Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, who kept slaves on his plantations in the West Indies, and supported the rights of fellow West Indian slave owners during his brief but turbulent political career. One of John Gladstone’s sons, Robertson, became a Freemason in Liverpool in 1833, the year of emancipation, when John was recorded as having around 1000 slaves on his plantations.
    The conflict of interests within the slavery debate, even between friends, presented a moral issue against one of business. A similar contrast can be seen in the Merchants Lodge, with Freemason Richard Downward, a Liverpool merchant, supporting the abolitionist William Roscoe. Freemasons were equally divided on the issue, with perhaps the most famous Freemason in the fledgling United States, Benjamin Franklin, supporting abolition, being president of the Pennsylvanian Society for the Abolition of Slavery.
    Indeed, English Freemasonry played a role in the establishment of the first black masonic lodge in Boston, America, which was actually granted a charter by the Premier Grand Lodge of England in 1784, as American lodges did not permit black membership. Its leader was a black American named Prince Hall, and Prince Hall Masonry has since spread to Canada, the Caribbean and Liberia. English Freemasonry could also boast another connection to the anti-slavery movement, with Freemasons’ Hall in London being famously used as the location for the world’s first Anti-Slavery convention on 12 June, 1840.
    Also included amongst the Liverpool merchants on the lodge list is merchant Melling Wolley, whose residence is given as New Orleans, and John Samuel Thompson, a merchant from Santa Cruz. Other Liverpool lodges also list a number of merchants and mariners visiting from New York, Boston and Bermuda during this period, testifying to the intricate masonic links between Trans-Atlantic ports and the networking that could be offered. Indeed, there are parallels between the Liverpool based Merchants Lodge and the St. Andrews Lodge in Boston, both having a high percentage of young, well connected and powerful merchants as members, intent on gaining a hold on local politics.
    Despite the large number of merchants in the Merchants Lodge, there were only a small number of members directly involved in the slave trade, most being involved in a variety of other trades. Evidence from other lodges in Liverpool reveals a similarly small number of merchants who also had direct involvement in slavery. The short lived, Liverpool based, Calladonian Lodge had among its incomplete membership list the conspicuous name of John Aspinall, who seems to have joined in 1786. John was related to James and William Aspinall (both appear to be non-masons), all of whom were involved in local shipping and co-owning a number of slave ships. Two lodges in Liverpool during this period do hint at an involvement in local shipping: the Mariners Lodge and the Sea Captains Lodge, though the records are incomplete and at times patchy. Local Freemason and Liverpool merchant, James Chalmers, listed as the co-owner of the slave ship Union in 1799, was both a founder member of the Antient Union Lodge in 1792 and the Harmonic Lodge in 1796, and had also been a member of St. George’s Lodge of Harmony. These were all ‘Antient’ lodges in Liverpool and Chalmers became dominant in all of them.
    One prominent member of the Antient Union Lodge who enthusiastically supported the Liverpool slave trade was General Isaac Gascoyne, MP. Gascoyne, a dedicated Tory, joined the lodge on 16 June, 1796, and fought hard against abolitionists such as Roscoe, causing Lord Howick to comment that, ‘He [Gascoyne] considered the slave trade so great a blessing, that if it were not in existence at present he should propose to establish it.’
    Gascoyne and Howick had confronted each other on 23 February, 1807 in the crucial debate on the slave trade, discussing the economic effects of the abolition of the slave trade to Liverpool. The networking aspect of Freemasonry within the busy port of Liverpool would have been important during this period, with many of the members being young businessmen in their twenties and thirties. Freemasonry offered the social nexus for the young merchants within Liverpool, and slavery was mercilessly seen as merely another business enterprise. During the later eighteenth century slavery thus became a moral dilemma for Freemasons such as the abolitionist Richard Downward, yet at the same time, the trade was defended as a profitable business by other Freemasons such as Isaac Gascoyne, both ideals inevitably clashing with Abolition in 1807.

Thanks to Alex Gerrard of the Merchants Lodge no. 241, Liverpool, for giving access to archive material and illustrations.