William Wilberforce (1759–1833) was born into a merchant family in Hull. He studied at Cambridge University, where he befriended the future prime minister, William Pitt. Wilberforce was elected MP for Hull in 1780 and for Yorkshire in 1784.

By 1787 he was associated with the anti-slavery campaign and, encouraged by Pitt, he became its leading parliamentary spokesman. Wilberforce argued consistently for abolition and for 18 years he regularly introduced anti-slavery motions in Parliament until the Act abolishing the British slave trade was passed in 1807. Wilberforce lived just long enough to hear of Parliament’s abolition of slavery as an institution. He died on 29 July 1833, just three days after the deciding Commons vote.