Anna Richardson (née Atkins; 5 January 1806 – 27 March 1892) was an English Quaker slavery abolitionist and peace campaigner, and a writer and editor of anti-slavery texts and journals, based in Newcastle Upon Tyne.
[1] One of her tracts, Little Laura, the Kentucky Abolitionist, is identified by De Rosa as being aimed at children, but with a view to encouraging them to action, including "consulting with their parents and ... collect[ing] financial donations".
[3] Anna and her sister-in-law Ellen fund-raised on their own account, and are remembered for purchasing for £150 the freedom of escaped slave and African-American social reformer Frederick Douglass on 5 December 1846.
She served as a prison visitor, worked to aid refugees, and supported the temperance movement by establishing teetotal refreshment rooms with her husband.
Her Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry esteems her as "a serious and religious woman, with a lifelong commitment to philanthropy and reform, and considerable organizational abilities and leadership skills.