Joseph Beldam

Who was Joseph Beldam?

Joseph Beldam was an English writer, historian and advocate of the abolition of slavery.

Beldam was born at Shepreth Hall, son of William Beldam and Marianne, and died at Banyers, Royston and is buried in the family vault at Royston Church. He studied at St Peter's College, University of Cambridge, graduating on 9 October 1818, having entered the Middle Temple on 22 January 1818 to study Law. In his initial appointment to the Bar in 1825, he worked the [Norfolk Circuit] but had to retire from it owing to poor health. He then established a practice at the Old Palace Court, Royston. He subsequently resigned his practice so that he could devote his time to the abolitionist movement, with which he first became involved in 1826, joining the Anti-Slavery Society in London in 1827.

It was his publication of an open letter to Lord Dacre in that year that first brought him recognition for his anti-slavery work, when he came to the attention of Zachary Macaulay, the first editor of the Anti-Slavery Reporter and a former manager of a sugar plantation in Jamaica that used slaves. He subsequently became the editor or author of a majority of the Anti-Slavery Society's publications and, following the passing of the Emancipation Act in 1833, his legal expertise allowed him to become the official counsel for the society. Beldam's efforts at this period were mostly investigating abuses of the interim measures by which slaves would become apprenticed to their former masters as a means of allowing them to develop as fully independent, free citizens. Thanks to Beldam's careful collection of information, Parliament was forced to end the apprenticeship system in 1838, three years early.