Henry Smithers

Henry Smithers (Bapt. 7 August 1762 - 8 April 1828, Edge Hill, Lancashire) was an English shipowner based in Southwark, London. He was an active radical and abolitionist. He wrote poetry and a number of books on commerce and economics.

Henry was the son of Joseph Smithers and Martha (née Keene).^[1] With Henry Keene he ran a coal merchants business in Clink Street.^[1]

He was proposed for membership of the Society for Constitutional Information by Joseph Towers.^[1] He was also active in the Revolution Society, serving as both steward (1788) and secretary (1789). He was a founding member of the Society of Ship-Owners of Great Britain in 1802.^[2]^: 250 He went into business with his son, John Hampden Smithers, but they were declared bankrupt in 1815.^[1]

Smithers was an abolitionist and expressed these sentiments in his account of Liverpool, providing statistics on the increase in the slave trade during the eighteenth century.^[3]

Works[edit]

(1819) Observations Made During a Residence in Brussels Brussels: Self published
(1825) Liverpool, its commerce, statistics, and institutions; with a history of the cotton trade, Liverpool: Thomas Kaye

References[edit]

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Pope, Ed. "Smithers". Ed Pope History. Ed Pope. Retrieved 25 January 2020.
^ Clarke, James Stanier; McArthur, John, eds. (2010). The Naval Chronicle: Volume 8, July-December 1802: Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom with a Variety of Original Papers on Nautical Subjects. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-01847-0.
^ "Account of the Liverpool slave trade". The British Library. British Library. Retrieved 25 January 2020.

[Pope-1] Pope, Ed. "Smithers". Ed Pope History. Ed Pope. Retrieved 25 January 2020.

[Naval_Chronicle-2] Clarke, James Stanier; McArthur, John, eds. (2010). The Naval Chronicle: Volume 8, July-December 1802: Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom with a Variety of Original Papers on Nautical Subjects. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-01847-0.

[BL-3] "Account of the Liverpool slave trade". The British Library. British Library. Retrieved 25 January 2020.

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