"Inhumanity of Dealers in Human Flesh"

This engraved print, by George Cruikshank, has a lengthy caption:

"The Abolition of the Slave Trade, Or the inhumanity of dealers in human flesh exemplified in Captn. Kimber's treatment of a young Negro girl of 15 for her virjen [sic] modesty."

John Kimber was the captain of Recovery, a slaver owned by Bristol merchants.  In 1791, the ship left New Calabar, headed for the West Indies. During the passage, an incident occurred which aroused the furor of abolitionists.

William Wilberforce, in a 1792 speech to the House of Commons, said Kimber caused the death of a young teenager because she refused to dance, naked, on the deck of his ship - for which he had her whipped. 

Kimber was thereafter arrested.  In his trial, at the High Court of Admiralty, he was aquitted by an all-male jury who concluded the child had died of disease, not bad treatment.

Credits

Library of Congress, image LC-USZ62-6204.
Originally published in London, April 10, 1792.