Fowell Buxton

Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, 1st Baronet Buxton of Belfield and Runton (1 April 1786 – 19 February 1845), was an English Member of Parliament, brewer, abolitionist and social reformer. He married Hannah Gurney, whose sister became Elizabeth Fry, and became a great friend of her brother Joseph John Gurney and the extended Gurney family.

Buxton was born at Castle Hedingham, Essex. His father, also named Thomas Fowell Buxton, died young, leaving three sons and two daughters. His Quaker mother's maiden name was Anna Hanbury. He completed his education at Trinity College Dublin, graduating in 1807.

Through his mother's influence Buxton became associated with the Gurney family of Earlham Hall, Norwich, especially with Joseph John Gurney and Gurney's sister, the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. He married their sister Hannah in May 1807. He lived at Belfield House, Weymouth, Dorset, in the constituency he represented as an MP, and later at Northrepps Hall in Norfolk, where he died aged 57,

In 1808, Buxton's Hanbury connections led to an appointment to work at the brewery of Truman, Hanbury & Company, in Brick Lane, Spitalfields, London. In 1811 he was made a partner in the business, renamed Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co, and later its sole owner.

Although he was a member of the Church of England, Buxton attended Quaker meetings with some of the Gurneys, and so became involved in the social reform movement, in which Friends were prominent. He helped to raise money for the weavers of London, who were being forced into poverty by the factory system. He provided financial support for Elizabeth Fry's prison reform work and joined her Association for the Improvement of the Female Prisoners in Newgate.

Buxton was elected to Parliament for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in 1818. As an MP, he worked for changes in prison conditions and criminal law and for the abolition of slavery, in which he was helped by his sister-in-law Louisa Gurney Hoare.^{[citation needed]} He also opposed capital punishment and pushed for its abolition. Although he never accomplished that, he worked to restrict the crimes for which capital punishment could be meted, whose number eventually fell from more than 200 to eight (8). Other moves for which Buxton argued were the suppression of lotteries and abolition of suttee, the practice of burning widows in India.

Thomas and Hannah Buxton had eight children, but four died of whooping cough over a five-week period around April 1820. Another died of consumption some time later. Hannah would send boxes of toys to the missionary Anna Hinderer in Nigeria in 1855. By 1866, her grandchildren were parcelling them up.

The slave trade had been abolished in 1807, but existing slavery remained and Buxton joined in the campaign to abolish it. In 1823, he helped to found the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society (later the Anti-Slavery Society). In May 1823, Buxton introduced in the House of Commons a resolution condemning the state of slavery as "repugnant to the principles of the British constitution and of the Christian religion", and called for its gradual abolition "throughout the British colonies". He also pressured the government to send dispatches to the colonies to improve the treatment of slaves.