Extract from Thomas Clarkson's "The History, Rise, Progress and Accomplisment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament", 1808
Curator's note:
The text shown here accompanies a plan of the Brookes slave ship. In 1788 a law was passed which used the tonnage of a ship to determine the number of slaves that it was permitted to carry. Under the new law the Brookes was allowed to carry 451 slaves. This meant that men were allocated a space of only six feet by four feet four inches; women were given five feet by one foot four inches, boys five feet by one foot two inches and girls just four feet six inches by one foot.
