title: All Things Must Pass

text: Harrison commissioned Tom Wilkes to design a hinged box in which to house the three vinyl discs, rather than have them packaged in a triple gatefold cover. Apple insider Tony Bramwell later recalled: "It was a bloody big thing ... You needed arms like an orang-utan to carry half a dozen." The packaging caused some confusion among retailers, who, at that time, associated boxed albums with opera or classical works.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: The stark black-and-white cover photo was taken on the main lawn at Friar Park by Wilkes' Camouflage Productions partner, Barry Feinstein. Commentators interpret the photograph – showing Harrison seated in the centre of, and towering over, four comical-looking garden gnomes – as representing his removal from the Beatles' collective identity. The gnomes had recently been delivered to Friar Park and placed on the lawn; seeing the four figures there, and mindful of the message in the album's title, Feinstein immediately drew parallels with Harrison's former band. Author and music journalist Mikal Gilmore has written that Lennon's initial negativity regarding "All Things Must Pass" was possibly because he was "irritated" by this cover photo; Harrison biographer Elliot Huntley attributes Lennon's reaction to envy during a time when "everything [Harrison] touched turned to gold".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Apple included a poster with the album, showing Harrison in a darkened corridor of his home, standing in front of an iron-framed window. Wilkes had designed a more adventurous poster, but according to Beatles author Bruce Spizer, Harrison was uncomfortable with the imagery. Some of the Feinstein photographs that Wilkes had incorporated into this original poster design appeared instead on the picture sleeves for the "My Sweet Lord" single and its follow-up, "What Is Life".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: EMI and its US counterpart, Capitol Records, had originally scheduled the album for release in October 1970, and advance promotion began in September. An "intangible buzz" had been "in the air for months" regarding Harrison's solo album, according to Alan Clayson, and "for reasons other than still-potent loyalty to the Fab Four". Harrison's stature as an artist had grown over the past year through the acclaim afforded his songs on "Abbey Road", as well as the speculation caused by his and Dylan's joint recording session in New York. Noting also Harrison's role in popularising new acts such as the Band and Delaney & Bonnie, and his association with Clapton and Cream, "NME" critic Bob Woffinden concluded in 1981: "All in all, Harrison's credibility was building to a peak."


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "All Things Must Pass" was released on 27 November 1970 in the United States, and on 30 November in Britain, with the rare distinction of having the same Apple catalogue number (STCH 639) in both countries. Often credited as rock's first triple album, it was the first triple set of previously unissued music by a single act, the multi-artist "" live album having preceded it by six months. Adding to the commercial appeal of Harrison's songs, "All Things Must Pass" appeared at a time when religion and spirituality had become a trend among Western youth. Apple issued "My Sweet Lord" as the album's first single, as a double A-side with "Isn't It a Pity" in the majority of countries. Discussing the song's cultural impact, Gilmore credits "My Sweet Lord" with being "as pervasive on radio and in youth consciousness as anything the Beatles had produced".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Another factor behind the album's first weeks of release was Harrison's meeting with McCartney in New York, the failure of which led to McCartney filing suit in London's High Court to dissolve the Beatles' legal partnership. Songs such as "Wah-Wah", "Apple Scruffs", "Isn't It a Pity" and "Run of the Mill" resonated with listeners as documents of the group's dysfunction. In the fallout to the break-up, according to journalist Kitty Empire, Harrison's triple album "functioned as a kind of repository for grief" for the band's fans.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "My Sweet Lord" was highly successful, topping singles charts around the world during the first few months of 1971. It was the first solo single by a former Beatle to be number 1 in the UK or the US, and became the most performed song of that year. Issued in February 1971, the second single, "What Is Life" backed with "Apple Scruffs", also became an international hit.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "All Things Must Pass" was number 1 on the UK's official albums chart for eight weeks, although until 2006, chart records incorrectly stated that it had peaked at number 4. On "Melody Maker"s national chart, the album was also number 1 for eight weeks, from 6 February to 27 March, six of which coincided with "My Sweet Lord" topping the magazine's singles chart. In America, "All Things Must Pass" spent seven weeks at number 1 on the "Billboard" Top LP's chart, from 2 January until 20 February, and a similarly long period atop the listings compiled by "Cash Box" and "Record World"; for three of those weeks, "My Sweet Lord" held the top spot on the "Billboard" Hot 100. In Canada the album hit number 1 on just its 3rd week, was number 1 for 9 weeks, and was on the charts for 31 weeks, ending July 17, 1971.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: The extent of Harrison's success surprised the music industry and largely overshadowed Lennon's concurrently released "Plastic Ono Band" album, which Spector also co-produced. Writing in the April 2001 issue of "Record Collector", Peter Doggett described Harrison as "arguably the most successful rock star on the planet" at the start of 1971, with "All Things Must Pass" "easily outstripping other solo Beatles projects later in the year, such as [McCartney's] "Ram" and [Lennon's] "Imagine"". Harrison's so-called ""Billboard" double" – whereby one artist simultaneously holds the top positions on the magazine's albums and singles listings – was a feat that none of his former bandmates equalled until Paul McCartney and Wings repeated the achievement in June 1973. At the 1972 Grammy Awards, "All Things Must Pass" was nominated for Album of the Year and "My Sweet Lord" for Record of the Year, but Harrison lost out in both categories to Carole King.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "All Things Must Pass" was awarded a gold disc by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) on 17 December 1970 and it has since been certified seven times platinum by the RIAA. In January 1975, the Canadian Recording Industry Association announced that it had been certified as a platinum album in Canada. According to John Bergstrom of "PopMatters", as of January 2011, "All Things Must Pass" had sold more than "Imagine" and McCartney and Wings' "Band on the Run" (1973) combined. Also writing in 2011, Lennon and Harrison biographer Gary Tillery describes it as "the most successful album ever released by an ex-Beatle". According to Hamish Champ's 2018 book "The 100 Best-Selling Albums of the 70s", in the US, "All Things Must Pass" is the 33rd-best-selling album from the 1970s.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "All Things Must Pass" received almost universal critical acclaim on release – as much for the music and lyrical content as for the fact that, of all the former Beatles, it was the work of supposed junior partner George Harrison. Harrison had usually contributed just two songs to a Beatles album; in author Robert Rodriguez's description, critics' attention was now centred on "a major talent unleashed, one who'd been hidden in plain sight all those years" behind Lennon and McCartney. "That the Quiet Beatle was capable of such range", Rodriguez continues, "from the joyful 'What Is Life' to the meditative 'Isn't It a Pity' to the steamrolling 'Art of Dying' to the playful 'I Dig Love' – was revelatory." Most reviewers tended to discount the third disc of studio jams, accepting that it was a "free" addition to justify the set's high retail price, although Anthony DeCurtis recognises "Apple Jam" as further evidence of the album's "bracing air of creative liberation".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Ben Gerson of "Rolling Stone" deemed "All Things Must Pass" "both an intensely personal statement and a grandiose gesture, a triumph over artistic modesty" and referenced the three-record set as an "extravaganza of piety and sacrifice and joy, whose sheer magnitude and ambition may dub it the "War and Peace" of rock 'n' roll". Gerson also lauded the album's production as being "of classic Spectorian proportions, Wagnerian, Brucknerian, the music of mountain tops and vast horizons". In the "NME", Alan Smith referred to Harrison's songs as "music of the mind", adding: "they search and they wander, as if in the soft rhythms of a dream, and in the end he has set them to words which are often both profound and profoundly beautiful." "Billboard"s reviewer hailed "All Things Must Pass" as "a masterful blend of rock and piety, technical brilliance and mystic mood, and relief from the tedium of everyday rock".<ref name="BB review/google">"Album Reviews", "Billboard", 19 December 1970, p. 50 (retrieved 28 November 2012).</ref>


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "Melody Maker"s Richard Williams summed up the surprise many felt at Harrison's apparent transformation: "All Things Must Pass", he said, provided "the rock equivalent of the shock felt by pre-war moviegoers when Garbo first opened her mouth in a talkie: Garbo talks! – Harrison is free!" In another review, for "The Times", Williams opined that, of all the Beatles' solo releases thus far, Harrison's album "makes far and away the best listening, perhaps because it is the one which most nearly continues the tradition they began eight years ago". William Bender of "Time" magazine described it as an "expressive, classically executed personal statement ... one of the outstanding rock albums in years", while Tom Zito of "The Washington Post" predicted that it would influence the discourse on "the [real] genius behind the Beatles".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: In "The New York Times", Don Heckman deemed the album "a release that shouldn't be missed" and outlined his "complex" reaction to being presented with a sequence of Harrison songs for the first time: "amazement at the range of Harrison's talents; fascination at the effects of Phil Spector's participation as the album's producer; curiosity about the many messages that waft through the Harrison songs". John Gabree of "High Fidelity" described it as "the big album of the year" and a "unified yet tremendously varied" work. In response to rumours that the Beatles were due to reunite, Gabree said that, on the strength of the Harrison and Lennon solo albums, "I, for one, don't care if they ever do."


title: All Things Must Pass

text: An album that sounded contemporary in 1970 was viewed as dated and faddish later in the decade. "Village Voice" critic Robert Christgau, having bemoaned in 1971 that it was characterised by "overblown fatuity" and uninteresting music, wrote in "" (1981) of the album's "featurelessness", "right down to the anonymity of the multitracked vocals". In their book "", Roy Carr and Tony Tyler were likewise lukewarm in their assessment, criticising the "homogeneity" of the production and "the lugubrious nature of Harrison's composing". Writing in "The Beatles Forever" in 1977, however, Nicholas Schaffner praised the album as the "crowning glory" of Harrison's and Spector's careers, and highlighted "All Things Must Pass" and "Beware of Darkness" as the "two most eloquent songs ... musically as well as lyrically".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: AllMusic's Richie Unterberger views "All Things Must Pass" as "[Harrison's] best ... a very moving work", and Roger Catlin of MusicHound describes the set as "epic and audacious", its "dense production and rich songs topped off by the extra album of jamming". Unterberger has also written that while the Beatles' break-up remains a source of sorrow for many listeners, "it's impossible not to rejoice in George's greatest triumph" and that, as further evidenced in the bootlegs of outtakes from the sessions, Lennon, McCartney and Beatles producer George Martin undervalued not just Harrison's songwriting abilities but also his talent as a producer. "Q" magazine considers the album to be an exemplary fusion of "rock and religion", as well as "the single most satisfying collection of any solo Beatle". Filmmaker Martin Scorsese has written of the "powerful sense of the ritualistic on the album", adding: "I remember feeling that it had the grandeur of liturgical music, of the bells used in Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies." Writing for "Rolling Stone" in 2002, Greg Kot described this grandeur as an "echo-laden cathedral of rock in excelsis" where the "real stars" are Harrison's songs; in the same publication, Mikal Gilmore labelled the album "the finest solo work any ex-Beatle ever produced".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: In his 2001 review for "Mojo", John Harris said that "All Things Must Pass" "remains the best Beatles solo album ... oozing both the goggle-eyed joy of creative emancipation and the sense of someone pushing himself to the limit". In another 2001 review, for the "Chicago Tribune", Kot wrote: "Neither Lennon nor McCartney, let alone Ringo Starr, ever put out a solo album more accomplished than "All Things Must Pass"... In subsequent years, Lennon and McCartney would strive mightily to scale the same heights as "All Things Must Pass" with solo works such as "Imagine" and "Band on the Run", but they would never top it." Nigel Williamson of "Uncut" said that the album includes some of Harrison's best songs in "My Sweet Lord", "All Things Must Pass" and "Beware of Darkness", and stands as "George's finest... and arguably the best post-Beatles solo album of them all".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: In "The Rolling Stone Album Guide" (2004), Mac Randall writes that the album is exceptional, but "a tad overrated" by those critics who tend to overlook how its last 30 minutes comprise "a bunch of instrumental blues jams that nobody listens to more than once". Unterberger similarly cites the inclusion of "Apple Jam" as "a very significant flaw", while recognising that its content "proved to be of immense musical importance", with the formation of Derek and the Dominos. Writing for "Pitchfork" in 2016, Jayson Greene said that Harrison was the only former Beatle who "changed the terms of what an album could be" since, although "All Things Must Pass" was not the first rock triple LP, "in the cultural imagination, it is "the" first triple album, the first one released as a pointed statement."


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Author Mark Ribowsky says that "All Things Must Pass" "forged the seventies first new rock idiom", while music historian David Howard writes that the album's combination of expansive hard rock and "intimate acoustic-confessionals" made it the touchstone for the early 1970s rock sound. Another "Rolling Stone" critic, James Hunter, commented in 2001 on how "All Things Must Pass" "helped define the decade it ushered in", in that "the cast, the length, the long hair falling on suede-covered shoulders ... foretold the sprawl and sleepy ambition of the Seventies."


title: All Things Must Pass

text: In his "PopMatters" review, John Bergstrom likens "All Things Must Pass" to "the sound of Harrison exhaling", adding: "He was quite possibly the only Beatle who was completely satisfied with the Beatles being gone." Bergstrom credits the album with heavily influencing bands such as ELO, My Morning Jacket, Fleet Foxes and Grizzly Bear, as well as helping bring about the dream pop phenomenon. In Harris' view, the "widescreen sound" used by Harrison and Spector on some of the tracks was a forerunner to recordings by ELO and Oasis.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Among Harrison's biographers, Simon Leng views "All Things Must Pass" as a "paradox of an album": as eager as Harrison was to break free from his identity as a Beatle, Leng suggests, many of the songs document the "Kafkaesque chain of events" of life within the band and so added to the "mythologized history" he was looking to escape. Ian Inglis notes 1970's place in an era marking "the new supremacy of the singer-songwriter", through such memorable albums as Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush", Van Morrison's "Moondance" and Joni Mitchell's "Ladies of the Canyon", but that none of these "possessed the startling impact" of "All Things Must Pass". Harrison's triple album, Inglis writes, "[would] elevate 'the third Beatle' into a position that, for a time at least, comfortably eclipsed that of his former bandmates".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Writing for "Spectrum Culture", Kevin Korber describes the album as a celebration of "the power that music and art can have if we are free to create it and experience it on our own terms", and therefore "perhaps the greatest thing to come out of the breakup of the Beatles". Jim Irvin considers it to be "a sharper clutch of songs than "Imagine", more individual than "Band on the Run"" and concludes, "It's hard to think of many bigger-hearted, more human and more welcoming records than this."


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "All Things Must Pass" features in music reference books such as "The Mojo Collection: The Greatest Albums of All Time", Robert Dimery's "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die" and Tom Moon's "1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die". In 1999, "All Things Must Pass" appeared at number 9 on "The Guardian"s "Alternative Top 100 Albums" list, where the editor described it as the "best, mellowest and most sophisticated" of all the Beatles' solo efforts. In 2006, "Pitchfork" placed it at number 82 on the site's "Top 100 Albums of the 1970s". It was ranked 433rd on "Rolling Stone"s list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" in 2012 and 368th on the 2020 updated list. "All Things Must Pass" has also appeared in the following critics' best-album books and lists, among others: the Paul Gambaccini-compiled "" (1978; ranked number 79), "The Times" "100 Best Albums of All Time" (1993; number 79), Allan Kozinn's "The 100 Greatest Pop Albums of the Century" (published in 2000), "Q"s "The 50 (+50) Best British Albums Ever" (2004), "Mojo"s "70 of the Greatest Albums of the 70s" (2006), the "NME"s "100 Greatest British Albums Ever" (2006; number 86), "Paste" magazine's "The 70 Best Albums of the 1970s" (2012; number 27), and Craig Mathieson and Toby Creswell's "The 100 Best Albums of All Time" (2013).


title: All Things Must Pass

text: In January 2014, "All Things Must Pass" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award bestowed by the Recording Academy "to honor recordings of lasting qualitative or historical significance that are at least 25 years old". Colin Hanks titled his 2015 film "" after the album and, with the blessing of Harrison's widow, Olivia Harrison, used the title track over the end credits.<ref name="Kubernik/MusicConnection">Harvey Kubernik, "George Harrison 'All Things Must Pass' 50th Anniversary", "Music Connection", 10 November 2020 (retrieved 12 November 2020).</ref>


title: All Things Must Pass

text: To mark the 30th anniversary of the album's release, Harrison supervised a remastered edition of "All Things Must Pass", which was issued in January 2001, less than a year before his death from cancer at the age of 58. Ken Scott engineered the reissue, which was remastered by Jon Astley. Harrison and Scott were shocked at the amount of reverb they had used in 1970 and were keen to remix the album, but EMI vetoed the idea.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: The reissue appeared on Gnome Records, a label set up by Harrison for the project. Harrison also oversaw revisions to Wilkes and Feinstein's album artwork, which included a colourised "George & the Gnomes" front cover and, on the two CD sleeves and the album booklet, further examples of this cover image showing an imaginary, gradual encroachment of urbanisation on the Friar Park landscape. The latter series served to illustrate Harrison's dismay at "the direction the world seemed headed at the start of the millennium", Gary Tillery observes, a direction that was "so far afield from the Age of Aquarius that had been the dream of the sixties". Harrison launched a website dedicated to the reissue, which offered, in the description of Chuck Miller of "Goldmine" magazine, "graphics and sounds and little Macromedia-created gnomes dancing and giggling and playing guitars in a Terry Gilliam-esque world". As a further example of his willingness to embrace modern media, Harrison prepared an electronic press kit, which he described as "not exactly an EPK but it is a threat to world order as we know it".<ref name="Reid/Elsewhere">Graham Reid, "George Harrison Revisited, Part One (2014): The dark horse bolting out of the gate", "Elsewhere", 24 October 2014 (retrieved 2 March 2016).</ref>


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Titled "All Things Must Pass: 30th Anniversary Edition", the new album contained five bonus tracks, including "I Live for You", two of the songs performed for Spector at EMI Studios in May 1970 ("Beware of Darkness" and "Let It Down") and "My Sweet Lord (2000)", a partial re-recording of Harrison's biggest solo hit. In addition, Harrison resequenced the content of "Apple Jam" so that the album closed with "Out of the Blue", as he had originally intended. Assisting Harrison with overdubs on the bonus tracks were his son, Dhani Harrison, singer Sam Brown and percussionist Ray Cooper, all of whom contributed to the recording of "Brainwashed" around this time. According to Scott, Harrison had suggested they include a bonus disc containing recollections from some of the album's contributors, starting with Ringo Starr. The idea was abandoned since Starr could not remember playing on the sessions at all.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: With Harrison undertaking extensive promotional work, the 2001 reissue was a critical and commercial success. Having underestimated the album's popularity, Capitol faced a back order of 20,000 copies in America. There, the reissue debuted at number 4 on "Billboard"s Top Pop Catalog Albums chart and topped the magazine's Internet Album Sales listings. In the UK, it peaked at number 68 on the national albums chart. Writing in "Record Collector", Doggett described this success as "a previously unheard-of achievement for a reissue".


title: All Things Must Pass

text: Following Harrison's death on 29 November 2001, "All Things Must Pass" returned to the US charts, climbing to number 6 and number 7, respectively, on the Top Pop Catalog and Internet Album Sales charts. With the release on iTunes of much of the Harrison catalogue, in October 2007, the album re-entered the US Top Pop Catalog chart, peaking at number 3.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: For the 40th anniversary of "All Things Must Pass", EMI reissued the album in its original configuration, in a limited-edition box set of three vinyl LPs, on 26 November 2010.<ref name="Glide/40Anniv">"George Harrison 40th Anniv 'All Things Must Pass' 3 LP Collection", Glide Magazine, 4 November 2010 (retrieved 7 December 2015).</ref> Each copy was individually numbered. In what Bergstrom views as a contrast with the more aggressive marketing campaign run simultaneously by John Lennon's estate, to commemorate Lennon's 70th birthday, a digitally remastered 24-bit version of the album was made available for download from Harrison's official website. The reissue coincided with the Harrison estate's similarly low-key<ref name="Marchese/Second Disc">Joe Marchese, "Review: Ravi Shankar and George Harrison, 'Collaborations'", theseconddisc.com, 8 November 2010 (retrieved 10 March 2015).</ref> release of the Ravi Shankar–George Harrison box set "Collaborations" and East Meets West Music's reissue of "Raga", the long-unavailable documentary on Shankar that Harrison had helped release through Apple Films in 1971.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: "All Things Must Pass" was remastered again for the eight-disc Harrison box set "The Apple Years 1968–75", issued in September 2014.<ref name="Horowitz/AmSong">Hal Horowitz, "George Harrison: "The Apple Years, 1968–75"", "American Songwriter", 23 September 2014 (retrieved 4 October 2014).</ref> Also available as a separate, double-CD release, the reissue reproduces Harrison's 2001 liner notes<ref name="Marchese/Review">Joe Marchese, "Review: The George Harrison Remasters – 'The Apple Years 1968–1975'", theseconddisc.com, 23 September 2014 (retrieved 4 October 2014).</ref> and includes the same five bonus tracks that appeared on the 30th anniversary edition.<ref name="Grow/RSonline">Kory Grow, "George Harrison's First Six Studio Albums to Get Lavish Reissues", rollingstone.com, 2 September 2014 (retrieved 4 October 2014).</ref> In addition, the box set's DVD contains the promotional film created for the 2001 reissue.<ref name="Marchese/SecondDisc">Joe Marchese, "Give Me Love: George Harrison's 'Apple Years' Are Collected On New Box Set", theseconddisc.com, 2 September 2014 (retrieved 4 October 2014).</ref>


title: All Things Must Pass

text: On 27 November 2020, the Harrison family released a stereo remix of the song "All Things Must Pass" to mark the album's 50th anniversary. Dhani Harrison described it as a prelude to further releases related to the anniversary. That same month, as part of its "Archive on 4" series, BBC Radio 4 broadcast "All Things Must Pass at 50", a one-hour special presented by Nitin Sawhney.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: On 10 June 2021, the release of a 50th anniversary edition was officially announced for 6 August. The reissue is available in seven varieties, from Standard vinyl and CD editions up to an Uber Deluxe Edition box set.<ref name="Sinclair/SDE">Paul Sinclair, "George Harrison / All Things Must Pass 50th anniversary editions", "Super Deluxe Edition", 10 June 2021 (retrieved 14 June 2021).</ref> The most extensive editions contain 70 tracks across 5 CDs/8LPs, including outtakes, jams and 47 demos, 42 of which are previously unreleased, and a scrapbook containing archival notes and track-by-track annotation curated by Olivia Harrison. The Uber Deluxe set adds a 44-page book on the creation of the 1970 triple album,<ref name="Friedman/Paste">Jason Friedman, "George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" Getting 50th Anniversary Deluxe Reissue", "Paste", 10 June 2021 (retrieved 10 June 2021).</ref> along with scale replica figurines of Harrison and the Friar Park gnomes, an illustration by Voormann, and Paramahansa Yogananda's text "Light from the Great Ones", among other extras.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: On Metacritic, the Super Deluxe Edition has an aggregate score of 92 out of 100, based on eight reviews – indicating what the website defines as "universal acclaim". The release received maximum scores from "Mojo", "The Times", "The Daily Telegraph", the "Daily Mail", the "Daily Express", "Uncut" and "American Songwriter". It peaked at number 6 in the UK and number 7 on the "Billboard" 200 in the US; in other "Billboard" charts, it topped the listings for Top Rock Albums, Catalog Albums and Tastemaker Albums, and placed at number 2 on Top Albums Sales. The 50th anniversary release also peaked at number 2 in Germany and number 3 in Switzerland, among other top-ten international chart placings. In 2022, the 50th anniversary box set won the Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package.


title: All Things Must Pass

text: The following musicians are either credited on the 2001 reissue of "All Things Must Pass" or are acknowledged as having contributed after subsequent research:


title: Labradoodle

text: A Labradoodle () is a crossbreed dog created by crossing a Labrador Retriever and a Standard, Miniature, or Toy Poodle. The term dates back to at least 1955 but was unpopular at the time. Labradoodles are considered a good choice for people with canine dander allergies, since some have the same hypoallergenic coat as their poodle ancestors.


title: Labradoodle

text: The Australian Labradoodle Association of America, an organization run by Labradoodle breeders, says they are "generally considered healthy dogs". However, they also state that hip and elbow dysplasia are common problems affecting Labradoodles. Other ailments include eye diseases and Addison's disease. Wally Conron of Australia asserts that healthy Labradoodles are "few and far between" and most are "crazy or have a hereditary problem." He mistakenly took credit for naming the Labradoodle in 1989.


title: Labradoodle

text: The Labradoodle mix had been known in the United States since the 1950s and was used in the entertainment industry in the U.S. as early as the 1960s. For example, a Labrador-Poodle mix named Fang had a recurring role on the "Get Smart" show starting in 1965. At the same time (in the 1950s) the Cockapoo (a mix of Cocker Spaniel and Poodle) had a rise in popularity.


title: Labradoodle

text: The term "Labradoodle" was first used by Donald Campbell to describe his dog, a Labrador/Poodle cross (1955). However, the use of a Labradoodle as a guide/service dog was not common until 1989. Australian breeder Wally Conron introduced the cross-breed to the Royal Guide Dog Association of Australia in Victoria. Conron hoped that the combination of the low-shedding coat of the poodle, along with the gentleness and trainability of a Labrador retriever, would provide a guide dog suitable for people with allergies to fur and dander.


title: Labradoodle

text: Sultan, a dog from this litter, displayed all the qualities Conron was seeking and worked as a guide dog for a woman in Hawaii for ten years.


title: Labradoodle

text: Conron has since repeatedly stated he regrets initiating the fashion for this type of crossbreed and maintains it caused "a lot of damage" together with "a lot of problems", largely stemming from the genetic unpredictability of combining breeds. He also felt he was to blame for "creating a Frankenstein", adding that problems were being bred into the dogs rather than selectively breeding away from problems and towards a recognizable standard. He is further quoted as claiming: "For every perfect one, you're going to find a lot of crazy ones." Mr. Conron was referring to the craze he initiated of unscrupulous breeders crossing Poodles with multiple other breeds to create "designer" dogs in order to take advantage of the “doodle” trend.


title: Labradoodle

text: Currently, as with other mixed breeds, Labradoodles are not considered a purebred or breed by the AKC and other major kennel club associations in North America. Technically, they are a hybrid of two pure breeds rather than a new breed. However, in 2010 they began allowing owners of mixed breeds to register their dogs to receive an AKC ID number. There are other reputable organizations breeders can join if they qualify and follow the breed standard, regulations and ethical requirements. ALAA, ALCA and the Worldwide Australian Labradoodle Association (WALA) are the three major organizations for Australian Labradoodles.


title: Labradoodle

text: Guide Dogs Victoria no longer breeds Labradoodles, however, they are bred by other guide and assistance dog organizations in Australia and elsewhere. The Association for the Blind of Western Australia has introduced Labradoodles into their training program. Their first, Jonnie, graduated in November 2010. Labradoodles are now widely used around the world as guide, assistance, and therapy dogs. They are also popular family dogs.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles are crossbreeds of a poodle and a Labrador retriever. Breeders in Australia have gone on to develop the Australian Labradoodle which also includes spaniels in the mix for early generations of the breed. "Multigeneration Australian Labradoodles" are dogs who have been bred only to other multigeneration Australian Labradoodles for a minimum of four generations.


title: Labradoodle

text: These dogs have a breed standard and consistent looks and temperament. They are also low shedding and may result in less extreme allergic reactions due to their allergy friendly coat. Australian Labradoodles come in standard (large), medium, and mini size.


title: Labradoodle

text: Because the (generic) Labradoodle is a cross between two dog breeds and not a breed itself, puppies in the early hybrid generations do not have consistently predictable characteristics. The first crossing of a poodle with a Labrador does result in variations in terms of appearance, size, coat and temperament. So while most Labradoodles share some common traits, their appearance and behavioral characteristics can be widely variable.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles' hair can be anywhere from wiry to soft, and may be straight, wavy, or curly. Some Labradoodles do shed, although the coat usually sheds less and has less "dog odor" than that of a Labrador retriever. Regular haircuts, bathing and brushing are necessary to maintaining a healthy coat.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles often display an affinity for water and strong swimming ability from their parent breeds. Like most Labrador retrievers and poodles, Labradoodles are generally friendly, energetic, and good with families and children. Their parent breeds are both among the world's most intelligent dog breeds, in which the poodle is believed to be among the smartest (second, after the border collie).


title: Labradoodle

text: Some Labradoodles are born with what is deemed an undesirable coat. These coats generally appear with the Labradoodle having a flat coat without the curls the dogs are known for. A Labradoodle with an undesirable coat may look more like its Labrador retriever mother or father with a longer nose. These dogs may also have curly fur around the legs and tail.


title: Labradoodle

text: There is no consensus as to whether breeders should aim to have Labradoodles recognized as a breed. Some breeders prefer to restrict breeding to produce F1 hybrids (bred from a poodle and Labrador rather than, e.g. F2 hybrids bred from two Labradoodles) to ensure relatively uniform genetics among the Labradoodles, while maximizing genetic diversity of individual dogs to avoid inherited health problems that have plagued some inbred dog breeds.


title: Labradoodle

text: A large number of Labradoodle and Australian Labradoodle breeders who are ethical and well regarded, were previously breeders of purebred dogs. For many of these breeders, the inherent concerns with health and temperament for dogs who are being produced through repeated and more closely inbreeding and line-breeding led them to the Labradoodle or Australian Labradoodle. The WALA and ALAA maintain open stud books whereas the ALCA maintains a closed stud book.


title: Labradoodle

text: Others are breeding Labradoodle to Labradoodle over successive generations, and trying to establish a new dog breed. These dogs are usually referred to as "multigenerational" (multigen) Labradoodles or multigeneration Australian Labradoodles.


title: Labradoodle

text: Australian Labradoodles also differ from Labradoodles in general, in that they may also have other breeds in their ancestry. English and American cocker spaniel × poodle crosses (i.e. cockapoos). Two Irish water spaniels and soft-coated Wheaten terriers were used in some Australian Labradoodle lines. Curly coated retriever were used too, but these lines were unsatisfactory and are no longer used for breeding.


title: Labradoodle

text: Currently, Australian Labradoodle breeding lines may only have 3 breeds infused: poodles, Labrador retrievers, and spaniels. Infusions occur with early generation breedings. Multigeneration breedings do not use any breed other than Australian Labradoodle to Australian Labradoodle. Australian Labradoodles also generally have poodles and Labradors in their pedigrees that come from European lines, whereas other Labradoodle lines tend to rely heavily on American stock. Thus the frequent misnomer of "American" Labradoodle when referring generically to a Labradoodle.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodle coats are divided into three categories: wool, fleece, or hair. Australian Labradoodles predominantly have fleece coats that are straight or wavy only. Wool and hair coats do not apply other than to early generation Labradoodles.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles' coat colors include chocolate, cafe, parchment, cream, gold, apricot, red, black, silver, chalk, lavender, and blue -ish gray. Coat patterns can be solid, white abstract markings, parti, phantom, or tri-coloured. In general, Labradoodles may have any coat-color a poodle can have. There are three main types of the coat texture of a Labradoodle. This can be a hair, fleece, or wool.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles can be different sizes, depending on the size of sire and dam used, and their size-names generally follow the names used for poodles: miniature, medium, and standard.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles can have problems common to their parent breeds. Poodles and Labrador retrievers can have hip dysplasia, and should have specialist radiography to check for this problem before breeding. The parent breeds can also have a number of eye disorders, and an examination by a qualified veterinary eye specialist should be performed on breeding dogs. There have also been cases of neurological disorders, including epilepsy.


title: Labradoodle

text: Elbow dysplasia is a known common issue in the parent breeds, similar to hip dysplasia. This issue becomes more prevalent as a result of rapid growth during the puppy stage. Appropriate screening should be completed for this condition prior to breeding.


title: Labradoodle

text: Labradoodles have been known to be susceptible to progressive retinal atrophy (PRA), an inherited disease causing blindness, which occurs in both miniature poodles and cocker spaniels. It is recommended that Australian Labradoodles be DNA-tested for PRA before being bred.


title: Labradoodle

text: One study has found that UK Labradoodles have a higher incidence (4.6%) of multifocal retinal dysplasia (MRA) compared to Labrador retrievers. Cataract is common as well (3.7%) but prevalence is comparable to that of Labradors.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: The Real Housewives of New Jersey (abbreviated RHONJ) is an American reality television series that premiered on May 12, 2009, on Bravo. Developed as the fourth installment of "The Real Housewives" franchise, it has aired twelve seasons and focuses on the personal and professional lives of several women residing in the U.S. State of New Jersey.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: The cast of the recent twelfth season consists of Teresa Giudice, Melissa Gorga, Dolores Catania, Margaret Josephs, Jennifer Aydin and Jackie Goldschneider, with Traci Johnson serving as a friend of the housewives. Previously-featured cast members include original housewives Dina Cantin, Jacqueline Laurita, Caroline Manzo and Danielle Staub; and subsequent housewives Kathy Wakile, Teresa Aprea, Amber Marchese, Nicole Napolitano, and Siggy Flicker.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: The success of the show has resulted in the spin-offs "Manzo'd with Children" and "Teresa Checks In".


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" was announced by Bravo on April 15, 2008. The first season premiered on May 12, 2009, and starred Caroline Manzo, Jacqueline Laurita, Teresa Giudice, Dina Cantin and Danielle Staub with Dolores Catania as a friend of the housewives. For the first time in "The Real Housewives" franchise, the series followed cast members who are related to one another: sisters Caroline Manzo and Dina Cantin were at the time married to brothers Albert and Tommy Manzo, and Laurita is married to Caroline and Dina's brother, Chris Laurita. Dina and Tommy Manzo would later end up separated. The second season premiered on May 3, 2010, with Dina Manzo departing the series after the seventh episode. Staub left the show after the second season.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: The third season premiered on May 16, 2011, with new housewives Melissa Gorga and Kathy Wakile. It delivered the highest rated season premiere in Bravo's history and the highest rated season premiere in "The Real Housewives" franchise at the time. The fourth season premiered on April 22, 2012. This season served as Dolores Catania's final season as a friend until Season 7 where she would become a main cast member. The fifth season premiered on June 2, 2013. Jennifer Dalton joined the cast as a friend. Caroline Manzo and Laurita left the show after the fifth season.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: The sixth season premiered on July 13, 2014. It featured the return of Dina Manzo as a full-time cast member and new cast members Amber Marchese, Teresa Aprea and Nicole Napolitano. Wakile was demoted to a "friend of the housewives" role, while Laurita also appeared as a guest. Aprea, Cantin and Napolitano left the show, while Marchese was fired after the sixth season. Laurita returned as a full-time cast member in the seventh season, which premiered on July 10, 2016. The season also featured Dolores Catania and Siggy Flicker as new cast members, Dolores Catania was a friend of the show for the first four seasons and was originally cast for the show in Season 1 but backed out due to personal reasons. Kathy Wakile and Rosie Pierri appeared as "friends of the housewives". Aprea and Napolitano also appeared as guests. The season marked as the final appearance of Laurita, Wakile and Pierri in the show.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: Staub returned in the show as a "friend of the housewives" for the eighth season, which premiered on October 4, 2017. It also featured Margaret Josephs as the new cast member. Flicker left the show afterwards. The ninth season premiered on November 7, 2018, featuring Jennifer Aydin and Jackie Goldschneider joining the cast. While Staub returned as a friend once again. The tenth season premiered on November 6, 2019. The season marked Staub's final appearance, as she announced her resignation from the show for the second time in January 2020.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: Filming for the eleventh season was postponed by Bravo in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The eleventh season premiered on February 17, 2021. The twelfth season premiered on February 1, 2022 with Traci Johnson added as a friend of the housewives.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: "The Real Housewives of New Jersey" airs regularly on Bravo in the United States; most episodes are approximately forty-two minutes in length, and are broadcast in standard definition and high definition. Since its premiere, the series has alternated airing on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday evenings and has been frequently shifted between the 8:00, 9:00, and 10:00 PM timeslots.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: The series' success has resulted in a development of spin-off series. Caroline Manzo's children Albie and Chris had a web series spin-off alongside their roommate and friend Greg Bennett, "Boys to Manzo" which premiered on May 30, 2011. Caroline Manzo, who was part of the original cast of the show, quit the series due to involvement in the production of a new show, "Manzo'd with Children". The show premiered on October 5, 2014 on Bravo. The reality series follows the daily life of Manzo and her family, and lasted for three seasons.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: In October 2015, a three episode spin-off, entitled "Teresa Checks In" premiered. It featured the life of the Giudice family during the aftermath of Teresa Giudice's being sentenced to prison. The series featured cast members of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey", Melissa Gorga and Rosie Pierri.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: In December 2018, an after show featuring season 9's cast was released online through Bravo.com and YouTube. It featured their reactions to the most recent episode and thoughts on the season. An after show for the tenth season started streaming online on December 11, 2019.


title: The Real Housewives of New Jersey

text: Giudice and Melissa Gorga starred in the first season of the spin-off "The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip" on Peacock, traveling to Turks and Caicos alongside several other Housewives cast members from other cities’ franchises.


title: Babi Yar

text: Babi Yar () or Babyn Yar () is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first and best documented of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing some 33,771 Jews. The decision to murder all the Jews in Kyiv was made by the military governor "Generalmajor" Kurt Eberhard, the Police Commander for Army Group South, SS-"Obergruppenführer" Friedrich Jeckeln, and the "Einsatzgruppe" C Commander Otto Rasch. Sonderkommando 4a as the sub-unit of "Einsatzgruppe" C, along with the aid of the "SD" and Order Police battalions with the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police backed by the "Wehrmacht", carried out the orders. Sonderkommando 4a and the 45th Battalion of the German Order Police conducted the shootings. Servicemen of the 303rd Battalion of the German Order Police at this time guarded the outer perimeter of the execution site.


title: Babi Yar

text: The massacre was the largest mass-murder under the auspices of the Nazi regime and its Ukrainian collaborators during the campaign against the Soviet Union, and it has been called "the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust" to that particular date. It is only surpassed overall by the later 1941 Odessa massacre of more than 50,000 Jews in October 1941 (committed by German and Romanian troops), and by "Aktion Erntefest" of November 1943 in occupied Poland with 42,000–43,000 victims.


title: Babi Yar

text: Victims of massacres at the site included Soviet prisoners of war, communists, Roma and members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar during the German occupation.


title: Babi Yar

text: The Babi Yar (Babyn Yar) ravine was first mentioned in historical accounts in 1401, in connection to the sale of it by "baba" (an old woman) who was also the "cantiniere" in the Dominican Monastery. The word "yar" is Turkic in origin and means "gully" or "ravine". Over several centuries, the site was used for various purposes, including military camps and at least two cemeteries, including an Orthodox Christian cemetery and a Jewish cemetery. The latter was officially closed in 1937.


title: Babi Yar

text: Axis forces, mainly German, occupied Kyiv on 19 September 1941. Between 20 and 28 September, explosives planted by the Soviet secret police (the NKVD) caused extensive damage in the city, and on 24 September an explosion rocked Rear Headquarters Army Group South. Two days later, on 26 September, Maj. Gen. Kurt Eberhard, the military governor, and SS-"Obergruppenführer" Friedrich Jeckeln, the SS and Police Leader, met at Rear Headquarters Army Group South. There, they decided to exterminate the Jews of Kyiv, claiming that it was retaliation for the explosions. Also present were SS-"Standartenführer" Paul Blobel, commander of "Sonderkommando 4a" of Einsatzgruppe C, and his superior, SS-"Brigadeführer" Dr. Otto Rasch, commander of "Einsatzgruppe C". The mass-murder was to be carried out by units under the command of Rasch and Blobel, who were ultimately responsible for many atrocities in Soviet Ukraine during the summer and autumn of 1941.


title: Babi Yar

text: The implementation of the order was entrusted to "Sonderkommando 4a" of Einsatzgruppe C commanded by Blobel, under the general command of Friedrich Jeckeln. This unit consisted of "Sicherheitsdienst" (SD) and "Sicherheitspolizei" (SiPo), the third company of the Special Duties Waffen-SS battalion, and a platoon of the 9th Police Battalion. "Sonderkommando 4a" of Einsatzgruppe C and Police Battalion 45, commanded by Major Besser, conducted the massacre, supported by members of a Waffen-SS battalion. Contrary to the "myth of the clean "Wehrmacht"", the Sixth Army under the command of Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau worked together with the "SS" and "SD" to plan and execute the mass-murder of the Jews of Kyiv.


title: Babi Yar

text: On 29 and 30 September 1941, the Nazis and their collaborators murdered approximately 33,771 Jewish civilians at Babi Yar. The order to murder the Jews of Kyiv was given to "Sonderkommando" 4a of "Einsatzgruppe" C, consisting of "SD" and "SiPo" men, the third company of the Special Duties "Waffen-SS" battalion, and a platoon of the No. 9 police battalion. These units were reinforced by police battalions Nos. 45 and 303, by units of the Ukrainian auxiliary police, and supported by local collaborators. "Sonderkommando" 4a and the 45th Battalion of the German Order Police conducted the shootings. Servicemen of the 303rd Battalion of the German Order Police at this time guarded the outer perimeter of the execution site.


title: Babi Yar

text: According to the testimony of a truck driver named Hofer, victims were ordered to undress and were beaten if they resisted:


title: Babi Yar

text: The crowd was large enough that most of the victims could not have known what was happening until it was too late; by the time they heard the machine gun fire, there was no chance to escape. All were driven down a corridor of soldiers, in groups of ten, and then shot. A truck driver described the scene.


title: Babi Yar

text: In the evening, the Germans undermined the wall of the ravine and buried the people under the thick layers of earth. According to the Einsatzgruppe's Operational Situation Report, 33,771 Jews from Kyiv and its suburbs were systematically shot dead by machine-gun fire at Babi Yar on 29 and 30 September 1941. The money, valuables, underwear, and clothing of the murdered were turned over to the local ethnic Germans and to the Nazi administration of the city. Wounded victims were buried alive in the ravine along with the rest of the bodies.


title: Babi Yar

text: In the months that followed, thousands more were seized and taken to Babi Yar where they were shot. It is estimated that more than 100,000 residents of Kyiv of all ethnic groups, mostly civilians, were murdered by the Nazis there during World War II. A concentration camp was also built in the area.


title: Babi Yar

text: Mass executions at Babi Yar continued until the Nazis evacuated the city of Kyiv. On 10 January 1942 about 100 captured Soviet sailors were executed there after being forced to disinter and cremate the bodies of previous victims. In addition, Babi Yar became a place of execution of residents of five Gypsy camps. Patients of the Ivan Pavlov Psychiatric Hospital were gassed and then dumped into the ravine. Thousands of other Ukrainians were murdered at Babi Yar. Among those murdered were 621 members of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN). Ukrainian poet and activist Olena Teliha and her husband, and renowned bandurist Mykhailo Teliha, were murdered there on 21 February 1942. Also murdered in 1941 was Ukrainian activist writer Ivan Rohach, his sister, and his staff.


title: Babi Yar

text: Upon the Soviet liberation of Kyiv in 1943, Soviet officials led Western journalists to the site of the massacres and allowed them to interview survivors. Among the journalists were Bill Lawrence of "The New York Times" and Bill Downs of CBS. Downs described in a report to "Newsweek" what he had been told by one of the survivors, Efim Vilkis:


title: Babi Yar

text: Estimates of the total number of people who were murdered at Babi Yar during the Nazi occupation vary. At the Nuremberg trials in 1946, Soviet prosecutor Lev Smirnov claimed that approximately 100,000 corpses were lying in Babi Yar, he made this estimate by using documents which were published by the Extraordinary State Commission which the Soviets set up in order to investigate Nazi crimes after the liberation of Kyiv in 1943.


title: Babi Yar

text: In a recently published letter to the Israeli journalist, writer, and translator Shlomo Even-Shoshan which was dated 17 May 1965, Anatoly Kuznetsov commented on the Babi Yar :


title: Babi Yar

text: One of the most often-cited parts of Anatoly Kuznetsov's documentary novel is the testimony of Dina Pronicheva, an actress of the Kyiv Puppet Theatre, and a survivor. She was one of those ordered to march to the ravine, to be forced to undress and then be shot. Jumping before being shot and falling on other bodies, she played dead in a pile of corpses. She held perfectly still while the Nazis continued to shoot the wounded or gasping victims. Although the SS had covered the mass grave with earth, she eventually climbed through the soil and escaped. Since it was dark, she had to avoid the torches of the Nazis finishing off the remaining victims still alive, wounded, and gasping in the grave. She was one of the very few survivors of the massacre and later related her story to Kuznetsov. At least 29 survivors are known.


title: Babi Yar

text: In 2006, Yad Vashem and other Jewish organisations started a project to identify and name the Babi Yar victims. However, so far, only 10% have been identified. Yad Vashem has recorded the names of around 3,000 Jews murdered at Babi Yar, as well as those of some 7,000 Jews from Kyiv who were murdered during the Holocaust.


title: Babi Yar

text: In the course of the German occupation, the Syrets concentration camp was set up in Babi Yar. Interned communists, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), and captured resistance members were murdered there, among others. On 18 February 1943, three Dynamo Kyiv football players (Trusevich, Klimenko, and Kuzmenko) who took part in the Match of Death with the German "Luftwaffe" team were also murdered in the camp.


title: Babi Yar

text: Before the Nazis retreated from Kyiv ahead of the Soviet offensive of 1944, they were ordered by Wilhelm Koppe to conceal their atrocities in the East. Paul Blobel, who had been in control of the mass murders in Babi Yar two years earlier, supervised the Sonderaktion 1005 in eliminating its traces. The "Aktion" was carried out earlier in all extermination camps. The bodies were exhumed, burned and the ashes scattered over farmland in the vicinity. Several hundred prisoners of war from the Syrets concentration camp were forced to build funeral pyres out of Jewish gravestones and exhume the bodies for cremation.


title: Babi Yar

text: In the aftermath of the war, several SS commanders who had planned and supervised the massacre were arrested and put on trial. Paul Blobel, the overall commander of the SS unit responsible for the massacre, was sentenced to death by the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials in the Einsatzgruppen Trial. He was hanged on 7 June 1951 at Landsberg Prison. Otto Rasch was also indicted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial but his case was discontinued for health reasons, and he died in prison in 1948. Friedrich Jeckeln was convicted of war crimes by a Soviet military tribunal in the Riga Trial, sentenced to death, and hanged on 3 February 1946. Kurt Eberhard was arrested by US authorities but committed suicide while in custody in 1947.


title: Babi Yar

text: In January 1946, 15 former members of the German police (including ) were tried in Kyiv over their roles in the massacre and other atrocities. Twelve of them were sentenced to death (Fritz Beckenhof, Karl Burckhardt, Georg Heinisch, Wilhelm Hellerforth, Hans Isenmann, Emil Jogschat, Emil Knoll, Willi Meier, Paul von Scheer, Eckart Hans von Tschammer und Osten, Georg Truckenbrod, and Oskar Walliser). The other three received prison sentences. Those condemned to death were publicly hanged in the town square of Kyiv on 29 January 1946. Erich Koch, who had been "Reichskommissar" of Ukraine at the time, was tried and sentenced to death by a Polish court for his atrocities in occupied Poland. However, he was never tried for his crimes in occupied Ukraine. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he died in prison in 1986.


title: Babi Yar

text: Two additional perpetrators were given prison sentences at the Nuremberg Trials. In 1967, 11 men were charged for participating in the massacre in a German court in Darmstadt. After a 14 month trial, seven were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging between four and fifteen years. In 1971, three more former German police officials were put on trial in Regensburg. The vast majority of the perpetrators were never tried for their roles in the massacre.


title: Babi Yar

text: After the war, specifically Jewish commemoration efforts encountered serious difficulty because of the Soviet Union's policies. Yevgeny Yevtushenko's 1961 poem on Babi Yar begins "Nad Babim Yarom pamyatnikov nyet" ("Over Babi Yar there are no monuments"); it is also the first line of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 13.


title: Babi Yar

text: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, several memorials were erected on the site and elsewhere. The events also formed a part of literature. Babi Yar is located in Kyiv at the juncture of today's Kurenivka, Lukianivka and Syrets districts, between Kyrylivska, Melnykov, and Olena Teliha streets and St. Cyril's Monastery. After the Orange Revolution, President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine hosted a major commemoration of the 65th anniversary in 2006, attended by Presidents Moshe Katsav of Israel, Filip Vujanović of Montenegro, Stjepan Mesić of Croatia and Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. Rabbi Lau pointed out that if the world had reacted to the massacre of Babi Yar, perhaps the Holocaust might never have happened. Implying that this impunity emboldened Hitler, Lau speculated:


title: Babi Yar

text: In 2006, a message was also delivered on behalf of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, by his representative, Resident Coordinator Francis Martin O'Donnell, who added a Hebrew prayer Shalom, from the Mourners' Kaddish.


title: Babi Yar

text: In the spring of 1961, Babi Yar was the site of a massive mudslide. An earthen dam in the ravine was used to hold loam pulp which had been pumped from the local brick factories without sufficient drainage over the course of ten years. The dam collapsed after it was hit by a heavy rainstorm, resulting in a mudslide that swept away the low-lying Kurenivka neighborhood and several other areas. The death toll was estimated to be between 1,500 and 2,000 people.


title: Babi Yar

text: On 1 March 2022, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine the site was struck by Russian forces while they were trying to destroy the nearby Kyiv TV Tower. The attack resulted in the death of at least five people.


title: William Wilberforce

text: William Wilberforce (24 August 175929 July 1833) was a British politician, philanthropist and leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, eventually becoming an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he became an evangelical Christian, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In 1787, Wilberforce came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of activists against the slave trade, including Granville Sharp, Hannah More and Charles Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he soon became the leading English abolitionist. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British Slave Trade for 20 years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce was convinced of the importance of religion, morality and education. He championed causes and campaigns such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice, British missionary work in India, the creation of a free colony in Sierra Leone, the foundation of the Church Mission Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. His underlying conservatism led him to support politically and socially controversial legislation, which resulted in criticism that he was ignoring injustices at home while campaigning for the enslaved abroad.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In later years, Wilberforce supported the campaign for the complete abolition of slavery and continued his involvement after 1826, when he resigned from Parliament because of his failing health. That campaign led to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. Wilberforce died just three days after hearing that the passage of the Act through Parliament was assured. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, close to his friend William Pitt the Younger.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce was born in a merchant's house on the High Street of Hull, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, on 24 August 1759. (Wilberforce House is now a historic house museum.) He was the only son of Robert Wilberforce (1728–1768), a wealthy merchant, and his wife, Elizabeth Bird (1730–1798). His grandfather, William (1690–1774), had made the family fortune in the Baltic maritime trade and in sugar refining. He was a partner in a business that built the Old Sugar House on Lime Street, which imported raw sugar from plantations in the West Indies. He was twice elected mayor of Hull.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce was a small, sickly and delicate child with poor eyesight. In 1767, he began attending Hull Grammar School, which at the time was headed by a young, dynamic headmaster, Joseph Milner, who was to become a lifelong friend. Wilberforce profited from the supportive atmosphere at the school, until his father's death in 1768 caused changes in his living arrangements. With his mother struggling to cope, the nine-year-old Wilberforce was sent to a prosperous uncle and aunt with houses in both St James's Place, London, and Wimbledon, at that time a village south-west of London. He attended an "indifferent" boarding school in Putney for two years. He spent his holidays in Wimbledon, where he grew extremely fond of his relatives. He became interested in evangelical Christianity due to his relatives' influence, especially that of his aunt Hannah, sister of the wealthy merchant John Thornton, a philanthropist and a supporter of the leading Methodist preacher George Whitefield.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce's staunchly Church of England mother and grandfather, alarmed at these nonconformist influences and at his leanings towards evangelicalism, brought the 12-year-old boy back to Hull in 1771. Wilberforce was heartbroken at being separated from his aunt and uncle. His family opposed a return to Hull Grammar School because the headmaster had become a Methodist, and Wilberforce therefore continued his education at nearby Pocklington School from 1771 to 1776. Influenced by Methodist scruples, he initially resisted Hull's lively social life, but, as his religious fervour diminished, he embraced theatre-going, attended balls, and played cards.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In October 1776, at the age of 17, Wilberforce went up to St John's College, Cambridge. The deaths of his grandfather in 1774 and his uncle three years later had left him independently wealthy and as a result he had little inclination or need to apply himself to serious study. Instead he immersed himself in the social round of student life and pursued a hedonistic lifestyle, enjoying cards, gambling and late-night drinking sessions – although he found the excesses of some of his fellow students distasteful. Witty, generous and an excellent conversationalist, Wilberforce was a popular figure. He made many friends, including the more studious future Prime Minister William Pitt. Despite his lifestyle and lack of interest in studying, he managed to pass his examinations and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1781 and a Master of Arts degree in 1788.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce began to consider a political career while still at university during the winter of 1779–1780, while he and Pitt frequently watched House of Commons debates from the gallery. Pitt, already set on a political career, encouraged Wilberforce to join him in obtaining a parliamentary seat. In September 1780, at the age of twenty-one and while still a student, Wilberforce was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Kingston upon Hull, spending over £8,000, as was the custom of the time, to ensure he received the necessary votes. Free from financial pressures, Wilberforce sat as an independent, resolving to be a "no party man". Criticised at times for inconsistency, he supported both Tory and Whig governments according to his conscience, working closely with the party in power, and voting on specific measures according to their merits.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce attended Parliament regularly, but he also maintained a lively social life, becoming an habitué of gentlemen's gambling clubs such as Goostree's and Boodle's in Pall Mall, London. The writer and socialite Madame de Staël described him as the "wittiest man in England" and, according to Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, the Prince of Wales said that he would go anywhere to hear Wilberforce sing.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce used his speaking voice to great effect in political speeches; the diarist and author James Boswell witnessed Wilberforce's eloquence in the House of Commons and noted, "I saw what seemed a mere shrimp mount upon the table; but as I listened, he grew, and grew, until the shrimp became a whale." During the frequent government changes of 1781–1784, Wilberforce supported his friend Pitt in parliamentary debates.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In autumn 1783, Pitt, Wilberforce and Edward Eliot (later to become Pitt's brother-in-law), travelled to France for a six-week holiday together. After a difficult start in Rheims, where their presence aroused police suspicion that they were English spies, they visited Paris, meeting Benjamin Franklin, General Lafayette, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, and joined the French court at Fontainebleau.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Pitt became Prime Minister in December 1783, with Wilberforce a key supporter of his minority government. Despite their close friendship, there is no record that Pitt offered Wilberforce a ministerial position in that or future governments. This may have been due to Wilberforce's wish to remain an independent MP. Alternatively, Wilberforce's frequent tardiness and disorganisation, as well as his chronic eye problems that at times made reading impossible, may have convinced Pitt that his trusted friend was not ministerial material. Wilberforce never sought office and was never offered one. When Parliament was dissolved in the spring of 1784, Wilberforce decided to stand as a candidate for the county of Yorkshire in the 1784 general election. On 6 April, he was returned as MP for Yorkshire at the age of twenty-four.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In October 1784, Wilberforce embarked upon a tour of Europe which would ultimately change his life and determine his future career. He travelled with his mother and sister in the company of Isaac Milner, the brilliant younger brother of his former headmaster, who had been Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge, in the year when Wilberforce first went up. They visited the French Riviera and enjoyed the usual pastimes of dinners, cards, and gambling. In February 1785, Wilberforce returned to London temporarily, to support Pitt's proposals for parliamentary reforms. He rejoined the party in Genoa, Italy, from where they continued their tour to Switzerland. Milner accompanied Wilberforce to England, and on the journey they read "The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul" by Philip Doddridge, a leading early 18th-century English nonconformist.


title: William Wilberforce

text: After his earlier interest in evangelical religion when he was young, Wilberforce's journey to faith seems to have begun afresh at this time. He started to rise early to read the Bible and pray and kept a private journal. He underwent an evangelical conversion, regretting his past life and resolving to commit his future life and work to the service of God. His conversion changed some of his habits, but not his nature: he remained outwardly cheerful, interested and respectful, tactfully urging others towards his new faith. Inwardly, he underwent an agonising struggle and became relentlessly self-critical, harshly judging his spirituality, use of time, vanity, self-control and relationships with others.


title: William Wilberforce

text: At the time, religious enthusiasm was generally regarded as a social transgression and was stigmatised in polite society. Evangelicals in the upper classes, such as Sir Richard Hill, the Methodist MP for Shropshire, and Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, were exposed to contempt and ridicule, and Wilberforce's conversion led him to question whether he should remain in public life. He sought guidance from John Newton, a leading evangelical Anglican clergyman of the day and Rector of St Mary Woolnoth in the City of London. Both Newton and Pitt counselled him to remain in politics, and he resolved to do so "with increased diligence and conscientiousness". Thereafter, his political views were informed by his faith and by his desire to promote Christianity and Christian ethics in private and public life. His views were often deeply conservative, opposed to radical changes in a God-given political and social order, and focused on issues such as the observance of the Sabbath and the eradication of immorality through education and reform. As a result, he was often distrusted by progressive voices because of his conservatism, and regarded with suspicion by many Tories who saw evangelicals as radicals, bent on the overthrow of church and state.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In 1786, Wilberforce leased a house in Old Palace Yard, Westminster, in order to be near Parliament. He began using his parliamentary position to advocate reform by introducing a Registration Bill, proposing limited changes to parliamentary election procedures. He brought forward a bill to extend the measure permitting the dissection after execution of criminals such as rapists, arsonists and thieves. The bill also advocated the reduction of sentences for women convicted of treason, a crime that at the time included a husband's murder. The House of Commons passed both bills, but they were defeated in the House of Lords.


title: William Wilberforce

text: The British initially became involved in the slave trade during the 16th century. By 1783, the triangular route that took British-made goods to Africa to buy slaves, transported the enslaved to the West Indies, and then brought slave-grown products such as sugar, tobacco, and cotton to Britain, represented about 80 percent of Great Britain's foreign income. British ships dominated the slave trade, supplying French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and British colonies, and in peak years carried forty thousand enslaved men, women and children across the Atlantic in the horrific conditions of the middle passage. Of the estimated 11 million Africans transported into slavery, about 1.4 million died during the voyage.


title: William Wilberforce

text: The British campaign to abolish the slave trade is generally considered to have begun in the 1780s with the establishment of the Quakers' anti-slavery committees, and their presentation to Parliament of the first slave trade petition in 1783. The same year, Wilberforce, while dining with his old Cambridge friend Gerard Edwards, met Rev. James Ramsay, a ship's surgeon who had become a clergyman on the island of St Christopher (later St Kitts) in the Leeward Islands, and a medical supervisor of the plantations there. What Ramsay had witnessed of the conditions endured by the slaves, both at sea and on the plantations, horrified him. Returning to England after fifteen years, he accepted the living of Teston, Kent in 1781, and there met Sir Charles Middleton, Lady Middleton, Thomas Clarkson, Hannah More and others, a group that later became known as the Testonites. Interested in promoting Christianity and moral improvement in Britain and overseas, they were appalled by Ramsay's reports of the depraved lifestyles of slave owners, the cruel treatment meted out to the enslaved, and the lack of Christian instruction provided to the slaves. With their encouragement and help, Ramsay spent three years writing "An essay on the treatment and conversion of African slaves in the British sugar colonies", which was highly critical of slavery in the West Indies. The book, published in 1784, was to have an important impact in raising public awareness and interest, and it excited the ire of West Indian planters who in the coming years attacked both Ramsay and his ideas in a series of pro-slavery tracts.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce apparently did not follow up on his meeting with Ramsay. However, three years later, and inspired by his new faith, Wilberforce was growing interested in humanitarian reform. In November 1786, he received a letter from Sir Charles Middleton that re-opened his interest in the slave trade. At the urging of Lady Middleton, Sir Charles suggested that Wilberforce bring forward the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament. Wilberforce responded that he "felt the great importance of the subject, and thought himself unequal to the task allotted to him, but yet would not positively decline it". He began to read widely on the subject, and met with the Testonites at Middleton's home at Barham Court in Teston in the early winter of 1786–1787.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In early 1787, Thomas Clarkson, a fellow graduate of St John's, Cambridge, who had become convinced of the need to end the slave trade after writing a prize-winning essay on the subject while at Cambridge, called upon Wilberforce at Old Palace Yard with a published copy of the work. This was the first time the two men had met; their collaboration would last nearly fifty years. Clarkson began to visit Wilberforce on a weekly basis, bringing first-hand evidence he had obtained about the slave trade.


title: William Wilberforce

text: The Quakers, already working for abolition, also recognised the need for influence within Parliament, and urged Clarkson to secure a commitment from Wilberforce to bring forward the case for abolition in the House of Commons.


title: William Wilberforce

text: It was arranged that Bennet Langton, a Lincolnshire landowner and mutual acquaintance of Wilberforce and Clarkson, would organize a dinner party in order to ask Wilberforce formally to lead the parliamentary campaign. The dinner took place on 13 March 1787; other guests included Charles Middleton, Sir Joshua Reynolds, William Windham MP, James Boswell and Isaac Hawkins Browne MP. By the end of the evening, Wilberforce had agreed in general terms that he would bring forward the abolition of the slave trade in Parliament, "provided that no person more proper could be found".


title: William Wilberforce

text: The same spring, on 12 May 1787, the still hesitant Wilberforce held a conversation with William Pitt and the future Prime Minister William Grenville as they sat under a large oak tree on Pitt's estate in Kent. Under what came to be known as the "Wilberforce Oak" at Holwood House, Pitt challenged his friend: "Wilberforce, why don't you give notice of a motion on the subject of the Slave Trade? You have already taken great pains to collect evidence, and are therefore fully entitled to the credit which doing so will ensure you. Do not lose time, or the ground will be occupied by another." Wilberforce's response is not recorded, but he later declared in old age that he could "distinctly remember the very knoll on which I was sitting near Pitt and Grenville" where he made his decision.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce's involvement in the abolition movement was motivated by a desire to put his Christian principles into action and to serve God in public life. He and other evangelicals were horrified by what they perceived was a depraved and un-Christian trade, and the greed and avarice of the owners and traders. Wilberforce sensed a call from God, writing in a journal entry in 1787 that "God Almighty has set before me two great objects, the suppression of the Slave Trade and the Reformation of Manners [moral values]". The conspicuous involvement of evangelicals in the highly popular anti-slavery movement served to improve the status of a group otherwise associated with the less popular campaigns against vice and immorality.


title: William Wilberforce

text: On 22 May 1787, the first meeting of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade took place, bringing like-minded British Quakers and Anglicans together in the same organization for the first time. The committee chose to campaign against the slave trade rather than slavery itself, with many members believing that slavery would eventually disappear as a natural consequence of the abolition of the trade. Wilberforce, though involved informally, did not join the committee officially until 1791.


title: William Wilberforce

text: The society was highly successful in raising public awareness and support, and local chapters sprang up throughout Great Britain. Clarkson travelled the country researching and collecting first-hand testimony and statistics, while the committee promoted the campaign, pioneering techniques such as lobbying, writing pamphlets, holding public meetings, gaining press attention, organising boycotts and even using a campaign logo: an image of a kneeling slave above the motto "Am I not a Man and a Brother?", designed by the renowned pottery-maker Josiah Wedgwood. The committee also sought to influence slave-trading nations such as France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Holland and the United States, corresponding with anti-slavery activists in other countries and organising the translation of English-language books and pamphlets. These included books by former slaves Ottobah Cugoano and Olaudah Equiano, who had published influential works on slavery and the slave trade in 1787 and 1789 respectively. They and other free blacks, collectively known as "Sons of Africa", spoke at debating societies and wrote spirited letters to newspapers, periodicals and prominent figures, as well as public letters of support to campaign allies. Hundreds of parliamentary petitions opposing the slave trade were received in 1788 and following years, with hundreds of thousands of signatories in total. The campaign proved to be the world's first grassroots human rights campaign, in which men and women from different social classes and backgrounds volunteered to try to end the injustices suffered by others.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce had planned to introduce a motion giving notice that he would bring forward a bill for the Abolition of the Slave Trade during the 1789 parliamentary session. However, in January 1788, he was taken ill with a probable stress-related condition, now thought to be ulcerative colitis. It was several months before he was able to resume work, and he spent time convalescing at Bath and Cambridge. His regular bouts of gastrointestinal illnesses precipitated the use of moderate quantities of opium, which proved effective in alleviating his condition, and which he continued to use for the rest of his life.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In Wilberforce's absence, Pitt, who had long been supportive of abolition, introduced the preparatory motion himself, and ordered a Privy Council investigation into the slave trade, followed by a House of Commons review.


title: William Wilberforce

text: With the publication of the Privy Council report in April 1789 and following months of planning, Wilberforce commenced his parliamentary campaign. On 12 May 1789, he made his first major speech on the subject of abolition in the House of Commons, in which he reasoned that the trade was morally reprehensible and an issue of natural justice. Drawing on Thomas Clarkson's mass of evidence, he described in detail the appalling conditions in which slaves travelled from Africa in the middle passage, and argued that abolishing the trade would also bring an improvement to the conditions of existing slaves in the West Indies. He moved 12 resolutions condemning the slave trade, but made no reference to the abolition of slavery itself, instead dwelling on the potential for reproduction in the existing slave population should the trade be abolished. With the tide running against them, the opponents of abolition delayed the vote by proposing that the House of Commons hear its own evidence, and Wilberforce, in a move that has subsequently been criticised for prolonging the slave trade, reluctantly agreed. The hearings were not completed by the end of the parliamentary session, and were deferred until the following year. In the meantime, Wilberforce and Clarkson tried unsuccessfully to take advantage of the egalitarian atmosphere of the French Revolution to press for France's abolition of the trade, which was, in any event, to be abolished in 1794 as a result of the bloody slave revolt in St. Domingue (later to be known as Haiti), although later briefly restored by Napoleon in 1802. In January 1790, Wilberforce succeeded in speeding up the hearings by gaining approval for a smaller parliamentary select committee to consider the vast quantity of evidence which had been accumulated. Wilberforce's house in Old Palace Yard became a centre for the abolitionists' campaign and a focus for many strategy meetings. Petitioners for other causes also besieged him there, and his ante-room was thronged from an early hour, like "Noah's Ark, full of beasts clean and unclean", according to Hannah More.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Interrupted by a general election in June 1790, the committee finally finished hearing witnesses, and in April 1791 with a closely reasoned four-hour speech, Wilberforce introduced the first parliamentary bill to abolish the slave trade. However, after two evenings of debate, the bill was easily defeated by 163 votes to 88, the political climate having swung in a conservative direction in the wake of the French Revolution and in reaction to an increase in radicalism and to slave revolts in the French West Indies. Such was the public hysteria of the time that even Wilberforce himself was suspected by some of being a Jacobin agitator.


title: William Wilberforce

text: This was the beginning of a protracted parliamentary campaign, during which Wilberforce's commitment never wavered, despite frustration and hostility. He was supported in his work by fellow members of the so-called Clapham Sect, among whom was his best friend and cousin Henry Thornton. Holding evangelical Christian convictions, and consequently dubbed "the Saints", the group mainly lived in large houses surrounding the common in Clapham, then a village to the south-west of London. Wilberforce accepted an invitation to share a house with Henry Thornton in 1792, moving into his own home after Thornton's marriage in 1796. The "Saints" were an informal community, characterised by considerable intimacy as well as a commitment to practical Christianity and an opposition to slavery. They developed a relaxed family atmosphere, wandering freely in and out of each other's homes and gardens, and discussing the many religious, social and political topics that engaged them.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Pro-slavery advocates claimed that enslaved Africans were lesser human beings who benefited from their bondage. Wilberforce, the Clapham Sect and others were anxious to demonstrate that Africans, and particularly freed slaves, had human and economic abilities beyond the slave trade, and that they were capable of sustaining a well-ordered society, trade and cultivation. Inspired in part by the utopian vision of Granville Sharp, they became involved in the establishment in 1792 of a free colony in Sierra Leone with black settlers from Britain, Nova Scotia and Jamaica, as well as native Africans and some whites. They formed the Sierra Leone Company, with Wilberforce subscribing liberally to the project in money and time. The dream was of an ideal society in which races would mix on equal terms; the reality was fraught with tension, crop failures, disease, death, war and defections to the slave trade. Initially a commercial venture, the British government assumed responsibility for the colony in 1808. The colony, although troubled at times, was to become a symbol of anti-slavery in which residents, communities and African tribal chiefs, worked together to prevent enslavement at the source, supported by a British naval blockade to stem the region's slave trade.


title: William Wilberforce

text: On 2 April 1792, Wilberforce again brought a bill calling for abolition. The memorable debate that followed drew contributions from the greatest orators in the house, William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox, as well as from Wilberforce himself. Henry Dundas, as Home Secretary, proposed a compromise solution of gradual abolition of the Slave Trade, over a number of years. This was passed by 230 to 85 votes.


title: William Wilberforce

text: On 26 February 1793, another vote to abolish the slave trade was narrowly defeated by eight votes. The outbreak of war with France the same month effectively prevented any further serious consideration of the issue, as politicians concentrated on the national crisis and the threat of invasion. The same year, and again in 1794, Wilberforce unsuccessfully brought before Parliament a bill to outlaw British ships from supplying slaves to foreign colonies. He voiced his concern about the war and urged Pitt and his government to make greater efforts to end hostilities. Growing more alarmed, on 31 December 1794, Wilberforce moved that the government seek a peaceful resolution with France, a stance that created a temporary breach in his long friendship with Pitt. Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, who was Pitt's Secretary of State for War, instructed Sir Adam Williamson, the lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, to sign an agreement with representatives of the French colonists of Saint Domingue, later Haiti, that promised to restore the ancien regime, slavery and discrimination against mixed-race colonists, a move that drew criticism from abolitionists Wilberforce and Clarkson.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Abolition continued to be associated in the public consciousness with the French Revolution and with British radical groups, resulting in a decline in public support. In 1795, the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade ceased to meet, and Clarkson retired in ill-health to the Lake District.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In 1795 leave to bring in a bill for abolition of the slave trade was refused in the commons by 78 to 61; and in 1796, though he succeeded in carrying the same measure to a third reading, it was then rejected on 15 March 1796 by 74 to 70. Henry Dundas, who secured the 1792 commons "gradual" abolition of slave trade bill; to end on 1 January 1796, voted AYE, in support. Enough of his supporters, to have carried it were, as Wilberforce complains, attending a new comic opera.


title: William Wilberforce

text: However, despite the decreased interest in abolition, Wilberforce continued to introduce abolition bills throughout the 1790s.


title: William Wilberforce

text: The early years of the 19th century once again saw an increased public interest in abolition. In 1804, Clarkson resumed his work and the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade began meeting again, strengthened with prominent new members such as Zachary Macaulay, Henry Brougham and James Stephen. In June 1804, Wilberforce's bill to abolish the slave trade successfully passed all its stages through the House of Commons. However, it was too late in the parliamentary session for it to complete its passage through the House of Lords. On its reintroduction during the 1805 session, it was defeated, with even the usually sympathetic Pitt failing to support it. On this occasion and throughout the campaign, abolition was held back by Wilberforce's trusting, even credulous nature, and his deferential attitude towards those in power. He found it difficult to believe that men of rank would not do what he perceived to be the right thing, and was reluctant to confront them when they did not.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Following Pitt's death in January 1806, Wilberforce began to collaborate more with the Whigs, especially the abolitionists. He gave general support to the Grenville–Fox administration, which brought more abolitionists into the cabinet; Wilberforce and Charles Fox led the campaign in the House of Commons, while Lord Grenville advocated the cause in the House of Lords.


title: William Wilberforce

text: A radical change of tactics, which involved the introduction of a bill to ban British subjects from aiding or participating in the slave trade to the French colonies, was suggested by maritime lawyer James Stephen. It was a shrewd move, since the majority of British ships were now flying American flags and supplying slaves to foreign colonies with whom Britain was at war. A bill was introduced and approved by the cabinet, and Wilberforce and other abolitionists maintained a self-imposed silence, so as not to draw any attention to the effect of the bill. The approach proved successful, and the new Foreign Slave Trade Bill was quickly passed, and received royal assent on 23 May 1806. Wilberforce and Clarkson had collected a large volume of evidence against the slave trade over the previous two decades, and Wilberforce spent the latter part of 1806 writing "A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade", which was a comprehensive restatement of the abolitionists' case. The death of Fox in September 1806 was a blow, but was followed quickly by a general election in the autumn of 1806. Slavery became an election issue, bringing more abolitionist MPs into the House of Commons, including former military men who had personally experienced the horrors of slavery and slave revolts. Wilberforce was re-elected as an MP for Yorkshire, after which he returned to finishing and publishing his "Letter", in reality a 400-page book which formed the basis for the final phase of the campaign.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Lord Grenville, the Prime Minister, was determined to introduce an Abolition Bill in the House of Lords, rather than in the House of Commons, taking it through its greatest challenge first. When a final vote was taken, the bill was passed in the House of Lords by a large margin. Sensing a breakthrough that had been long anticipated, Charles Grey moved for a second reading in the Commons on 23 February 1807. As tributes were made to Wilberforce, whose face streamed with tears, the bill was carried by 283 votes to 16. Excited supporters suggested taking advantage of the large majority to seek the abolition of slavery itself, but Wilberforce made it clear that total emancipation was not the immediate goal: "They had for the present no object immediately before them, but that of putting stop directly to the carrying of men in British ships to be sold as slaves." The Slave Trade Act received royal assent on 25 March 1807.


title: William Wilberforce

text: In his youth, William Wilberforce showed little interest in women, but when he was in his late thirties his friend Thomas Babington recommended twenty-year-old Barbara Ann Spooner (1777–1847) as a potential bride. Wilberforce met her two days later on 15 April 1797, and was immediately smitten; following an eight-day whirlwind romance, he proposed. Despite the urgings of friends to slow down, the couple married at the Church of St Swithin in Bath, Somerset, on 30 May 1797. They were devoted to each other, and Barbara was very attentive and supportive to Wilberforce in his increasing ill health, though she showed little interest in his political activities. They had six children in fewer than ten years: William (born 1798), Barbara (born 1799), Elizabeth (born 1801), Robert (born 1802), Samuel (born 1805) and Henry (born 1807). Wilberforce was an indulgent and adoring father who revelled in his time at home and at play with his children.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce was highly conservative on many political and social issues. He advocated change in society through Christianity and improvement in morals, education and religion, fearing and opposing radical causes and revolution. The radical writer William Cobbett was among those who attacked what they saw as Wilberforce's hypocrisy in campaigning for better working conditions for slaves while British workers lived in terrible conditions at home. "Never have you done one single act, in favour of the labourers of this country", he wrote. Critics noted Wilberforce's support of the suspension of "habeas corpus" in 1795 and his votes for Pitt's "Gagging Bills", which banned meetings of more than 50 people, allowing speakers to be arrested and imposing harsh penalties on those who attacked the constitution. Wilberforce was opposed to giving workers' rights to organise into unions, in 1799 speaking in favour of the Combination Act, which suppressed trade union activity throughout Britain, and calling unions "a general disease in our society". He also opposed an enquiry into the 1819 Peterloo Massacre in which eleven protesters were killed at a political rally demanding reform. Concerned about "bad men who wished to produce anarchy and confusion", he approved of the government's Six Acts, which further limited public meetings and seditious writings. Wilberforce's actions led the essayist William Hazlitt to condemn him as one "who preaches vital Christianity to untutored savages, and tolerates its worst abuses in civilised states."


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce's views of women and religion were also conservative. He disapproved of women anti-slavery activists such as Elizabeth Heyrick, who organised women's abolitionist groups in the 1820s, protesting: "[F]or ladies to meet, to publish, to go from house to house stirring up petitions—these appear to me proceedings unsuited to the female character as delineated in Scripture." Wilberforce initially strongly opposed bills for Catholic emancipation, which would have allowed Catholics to become MPs, hold public office and serve in the army, although by 1813, he had changed his views and spoke in favour of a similar bill.


title: William Wilberforce

text: More progressively, Wilberforce advocated legislation to improve the working conditions for chimney-sweeps and textile workers, engaged in prison reform, and supported campaigns to restrict capital punishment and the severe punishments meted out under the Game laws. He recognised the importance of education in alleviating poverty, and when Hannah More and her sister established Sunday schools for the poor in Somerset and the Mendips, he provided financial and moral support as they faced opposition from landowners and Anglican clergy. From the late 1780s onward, Wilberforce campaigned for limited parliamentary reform, such as the abolition of rotten boroughs and the redistribution of Commons seats to growing towns and cities, though by 1832, he feared that such measures went too far. With others, Wilberforce founded the world's first animal welfare organisation, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (later the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). In 1824, Wilberforce was one of over 30 eminent gentlemen who put their names at the inaugural public meeting to the fledgling National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck, later named the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. He was also opposed to duelling, which he described as the "disgrace of a Christian society" and was appalled when his friend Pitt engaged in a duel with George Tierney in 1798, particularly as it occurred on a Sunday, the Christian day of rest.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce was generous with his time and money, believing that those with wealth had a duty to give a significant portion of their income to the needy. Yearly, he gave away thousands of pounds, much of it to clergymen to distribute in their parishes. He paid off the debts of others, supported education and missions, and in a year of food shortages, gave to charity more than his own yearly income. He was exceptionally hospitable, and could not bear to sack any of his servants. As a result, his home was full of old and incompetent servants kept on in charity. Although he was often months behind in his correspondence, Wilberforce responded to numerous requests for advice or for help in obtaining professorships, military promotions and livings for clergymen, or for the reprieve of death sentences.


title: William Wilberforce

text: A supporter of the evangelical wing of the Church of England, Wilberforce believed that the revitalisation of the church and individual Christian observance would lead to a harmonious, moral society. He sought to elevate the status of religion in public and private life, making piety fashionable in both the upper- and middle-classes of society. To this end, in April 1797, Wilberforce published "A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians in the Higher and Middle Classes of This Country Contrasted With Real Christianity", on which he had been working since 1793. This was an exposition of New Testament doctrine and teachings and a call for a revival of Christianity, as a response to the moral decline of the nation, illustrating his own personal testimony and the views which inspired him. The book proved to be influential and a best-seller by the standards of the day; 7,500 copies were sold within six months, and it was translated into several languages.


title: William Wilberforce

text: Wilberforce fostered and supported missionary activity in Britain and abroad, involved with other members of the Clapham Sect in various evangelical and charitable organisations.