Edmund Sturge

[1] Sturge became active in the anti-slavery movement and other liberal causes: for peace, penal reform, the suppression of the opium trade and in the Aborigines' Protection Society.

In 1814, he was apprenticed at John Bell, a highly successful Quaker pharmacist and manufacturing chemist, with a shop and laboratory on Oxford Street in London.

[8][9] On the death of John Sturge in 1840, Arthur Albright, brother to Edmund's wife and a trained chemist, joined the partnership.

This eventually led to the family becoming the largest landholder on Montserrat, successfully running estates with fairly paid labour for many years.

William Tallack, prison reformer, wrote:[15] Mr Edmund Sturge was for many years an active and highly esteemed member of the Howard Committee, and practically fulfilled the functions of its honorary secretary.

He was a brother of Mr Joseph Sturge, a man of similarly philanthropic energy, who, like himself, devoted much time and labour to the service of the Anti-Slavery cause.

He was part proprietor of estates in the island of Montserrat in the West Indies, and was therefore specially conversant with questions relating to the condition of negroes and coolies.

For many years he was a constant visitor to the lobbies of the House of Commons, to interest members of the legislature in the several objects of philanthropic effort which were so dear to himself.

[16] In the accompanying letterpress the journalist remarked of him : "No kindlier, simpler, gentler, more upright and honourable a soul ever informed a human body than that which is enveloped in the Quaker outside of Mr Sturge.

At Charlbury, Mr Sturge used to take his friends into the glades of the adjacent Wychwood Forest and into Cornbury Park, which contains some of the finest beech-trees in England.

In it they recorded : " The Committee gladly avail themselves of this opportunity of conveying to their esteemed friend and colleague, Mr Edmund Sturge, the expression of their profound sense of the value, to this Association and to other kindred bodies, of his services, and of his sound judgment and long experience.

At an Anti-Slavery meeting at the Mansion House, London, Mr Sturge's labours in the cause of humanity received public recognition from the Prince of Wales and several eminent statesmen.