Introduction
Mary Anne Estlin (1820 – 14 November 1902) was a British abolitionist and leading figure in anti-slavery and anti-prostitution campaigns in Britain.
Life
Mary Anne Estlin was born in 1820 to John Bishop Estlin, a leading ophthalmologist in Bristol. Her mother died when she was a small child, and she took her father's religion as well as his opposition to slavery. Estlin lived in the family home and never married.
From 1851 she led the Bristol and Clifton Ladies Anti-Slavery Society. She and Eliza Wigham were active in the campaign in England and in 1863 they both served on Clementia Taylor's Ladies' London Emancipation Society.
In 1854 Parker Pillsbury came to Britain to discuss the differing politics of the American and British abolitionists. Estlin and her father became involved in Pillsbury's problematic correspondence with the British activist Louis Chamerovzow, the secretary of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. Estlin arranged for the letters to be made public.
In 1868 she travelled to America, where she met other leading activists including Lucretia Mott and Susan B. Anthony.
There was a schism within the abolitionists between the radical views of William Lloyd Garrison and the more conservative position of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, who were content to see a gradual end to slavery. Eliza Wigham and Jane Smeal of the Edinburgh Ladies' Emancipation Society supported Estlin's initiative to find common ground between the Garrisonians and the BFASS.