Josiah Wedgwood, a village potter whose disability meant he could not use a potter’s wheel, brought about a quiet revolution in English society.
The rich have always had nice things; what changed in the eighteenth century was that, because of private enterprise and the industrial revolution, the poor started to share them too. Josiah Wedgwood was one of the pioneers who changed the lives of the poor for the better.
Josiah Wedgwood’s promotional gift made Abolitionism fashionable.
The Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, founded in 1787 by Thomas Clarkson, distributed a tasteful cameo of its emblem done in jasperware by Josiah Wedgwood. Clarkson (who sent some to Benjamin Franklin, President of Pennsylvania) later expressed his warm appreciation.