William Forster

William Forster (23 March 1784 – 27 January 1854) was a preacher, Quaker elder and a fervent abolitionist. He was an early member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in 1839. It was William and Stephen Grellet who introduced Elizabeth Fry to her life's work with prisons, but it was William's brother, Josiah, who accompanied Fry on her tour and inspection of prisons in France. Biography Forster was born in 1784. He initially trained as a land agent with his mother's brother in Sheffield, but he then started to tour England and Scotland as a minister. He visited the Hebrides in 1812 and Ireland in 1813–14. When visiting Newgate prison with Stephen Grellet, Forster was amazed at its state. He contacted Elizabeth Fry and she gathered together a group of women to help with improving prison conditions. Forster thereby alerted Elizabeth Fry to what was to be her life's work. In 1816, Forster married Anna Buxton and they moved to Dorset. When his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, entered parliament in 1818, he wrote to him to encourage him to take up the cause of slavery. He noted that the slavery trade had been abolished (in 1807 in the British Empire) but there was still the issue of those who were already slaves.