Thomas Clarkson's campaign chest belonging to Wisbech Museum to feature in major Cambridge Exhibition

Staff at Wisbech and Fenland Museum are preparing one of its greatest treasures – abolitionist Thomas Clarkson's campaign chest – for loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

It will be displayed as part of their exhibition Rise Up: Resistance, Revolution, Abolition, which is scheduled to run from February 21 to June 1, 2025.

The chest, carried 35,000 miles around Britain by Wisbech-born Clarkson to rouse popular feelings against slavery, originally contained a vast selection of African trading goods which he collected from sailors on ships in British slave ports.

Also contained in the chest were examples of implements of torture and restraint used to repress enslaved people.

Some of the items originally contained in the chest were lost before its gift to Wisbech Museum in 1870, and all need special care. Many of those that remain are significant examples of African craftsmanship, particularly the textile samples – one of which could be the oldest surviving cloth made in the Kente tradition.

The chest is an iconic object in the story of the anti-slavery movement in Britain.

Curator Robert Bell said: “Clarkson's chest is rightly to be given a central role in this important exhibition at one of the country's greatest museums, because the evidence it carried was pivotal in getting the slave trade outlawed in 1807. Clarkson was still fighting slavery itself when he died in 1846.”

The upcoming loan will delay the reappearance of Wisbech Museum's own permanent exhibit about the town's connection with the fight against slavery through Thomas Clarkson.

The chest and other items were removed from display for their protection during the Museum's major roof refurbishment in 2021-2 and a dedicated permanent exhibition space will be prepared for the chest's return in the Autumn of 2025.

Robert said: “We're excited to see how the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam showcases the life and work of Thomas Clarkson.”