Slave collar, c.1790 (iron)

Creator: unknown Slave collars with iron links. On board slave ships, captive Africans were kept below decks for the vast majority of the time. Men, women and children were segregated. Men were usually kept shackled, handcuffed in pairs by their wrists and with iron leg rings riveted to their ankles. Frequently they had such little space that they could only lie on their sides and could not sit or stand up These collars were from Cannon Hall near Barnsley, seat of the Spencer-Stanhope family. The family made their fortune as iron founders in South Yorkshire. In the 1750s, Benjamin Spencer-Stanhope (brother of the hall's owner), invested in a slave ship named after the house, although its voyage did not yield the expected profits. Walter Spencer-Stanhope his nephew, who inherited the hall in 1775, was a Tory MP of abolitionist sympathies and a friend of William Wilberforce.