Joseph Beldam

Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Joseph Beldam (26 December 1795 - 6 June 1866) was an English writer, historian and advocate of the abolition of slavery. Beldam was born at Shepreth Hall (Cambridgeshire), son of William Beldam and Marianne (née Woodham), and died at Banyers, Royston (Hertfordshire) and is buried in the family vault at Royston Church. He studied at St Peter's College, University of Cambridge, graduating on 9 October 1818, having entered the Middle Temple on 22 January 1818 to study Law. In his initial appointment to the Bar in 1825, he worked the [Norfolk Circuit] but had to retire from it owing to poor health. He then established a practice at the Old Palace Court, Royston. He subsequently resigned his practice so that he could devote his time to the abolitionist movement, with which he first became involved in 1826, joining the Anti-Slavery Society in London in 1827. It was his publication of an open letter to Lord Dacre in that year that first brought him recognition for his anti-slavery work, when he came to the attention of Zachary Macaulay, the first editor of the Anti-Slavery Reporter and a former manager of a sugar plantation in Jamaica that used slaves.