William Wilberforce was born in Hull on 24 August 1759. The son of a wealthy merchant, he entered Parliament at 21 and later became the principal parliamentary spokesman for the campaign to abolish the British slave trade.

Wilberforce studied at St John’s College, Cambridge, where he became friends with the future prime minister William Pitt. In 1780 he was elected MP for Hull, later moving to the larger Yorkshire constituency.

A religious change in the mid-1780s altered the direction of his public life. In 1787 Wilberforce agreed to represent the abolition cause in Parliament. He was part of a wider campaign. Thomas Clarkson travelled around Britain gathering evidence about the slave trade. Campaign organisations, petitioners and other abolitionists worked to build public support.

Wilberforce’s role was largely parliamentary. In 1789 he made a lengthy Commons speech setting out the case against the trade. From 1791 he brought repeated abolition motions before the House of Commons, but the campaign faced opposition and repeated defeats.

After years of unsuccessful attempts, Parliament passed legislation abolishing the British slave trade in 1807. The Act prevented British participation in the trade, but it did not abolish slavery itself in Britain’s colonies.

Wilberforce continued to support the campaign against slavery. He joined the Anti-Slavery Society in 1823, although Thomas Fowell Buxton increasingly took over leadership of the parliamentary effort as Wilberforce’s health declined.

Wilberforce retired from Parliament in 1825. In July 1833, he learned that legislation abolishing slavery in most British colonies had passed its final stage in the Commons. He died on 29 July, three days later.