Strutt Abdy book
*This date in 1791 is celebrated as the birth date of Edward Strutt Abdy, a white English legal academic and abolitionist.
Edward Strutt Abdy was born in the U.K., the fifth and youngest son of Thomas Abdy, of Albyns, Essex, by Mary, daughter of James Hayes, of Holliport, a bencher of the Middle Temple. He was educated at Felsted School and Jesus College, Cambridge. He was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1813, receiving a fellowship (B.A. 1813; M.A. 1817). Abdy made an extended American penitentiary tour to Auburn Prison in New York State, also southern and western states, to investigate the "silent system "separate system" in Pennsylvania.
The tour resulted in Abdy's publication of a three-volume Journal of a Residence and Tour in the United States of North America from April 1833 to October 1834. It reported on his research on U.S. penal institutions, made with members of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline and the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders. However, Abdy also wrote about the racism he witnessed in American Society. On his visit, Abdy had close contact with American abolitionists, including Maria Weston Chapman.
He influenced William Ellery Channing and Lydia Maria Child and was involved in the formation of the (American) Anti-Slavery League. Abdy paid a visit in New York to Peter Williams, Jr., the Black Episcopal minister. In his Journal of a Residence and Tour, Abdy recounts, under a chapter subheading "Africo-American craniology," a conversation he had on skulls with the sexton of Williams's church, who worked in what had become the burial ground for all Black New Yorkers. In the widely-reported conversation Abdy had with Channing, he had pushed Channing on whether he was properly informed on the free Black population. Channing produced a phrenological argument for white supremacy.
In August 1834, in Rhode Island, this encounter saw Abdy throw back some of Channing's words at him. Channing later told Harriet Martineau that Abdy's reasoning impacted his views. Later in life, Abdy published The Water Cure. Cases of Disease Cured by Cold Water. Translated from German, it contained remarks addressed to people of common sense, a translation of a pamphlet by Rudolf von Falkenstein. A notable author on racism and race relations in the United States, Abdy died on October 12, 1846, at 56. He was unmarried.
