The Brookes 

The Brookes – the famous print of The Brookes, a ship used to transport enslaved persons, was originally created by Thomas Clarkson in 1788. It was produced by the Plymouth Chapter of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and distributed widely by the London Abolition Society. The Brookes became a part of the testimony before the select committee in parliament that led to the bill instigated by Sir William Dolben that regulated the number of slaves that could be carried on a British ship. Clarkson included the drawing and some of the testimony in his Abstract of the Evidence delivered before a Select Committee of the House of Commons in the years 1790, and 1791; on the part of the petitioners for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade (Edinburgh: Glasgow and Edinburgh Abolition Societies, 1791; London: James Phillips, 1791),  37-9. The drawing depicted 454 slaves arranged flat on their backs in rows on two decks, with their allotted spaces (as allowed under the Dolben Bill) exactly as William Fox describes them in one of his famous anti-slavery pamphlets.  His printer and seller, Martha Gurney, began displaying the print in her shop in 1788; by 1792, when Fox published his pamphlet, he would have had the disturbing images burned into his mind.