Mary Birkett Card
Mary Birkett Card (28 December 17741817), was an Irish based British poet, abolitionist, and feminist, best remembered for her anti-slavery poem, A Poem on the African Slave Trade published when she was seventeen. Biography Mary Birkett was born on 28 December 1774 in Liverpool to William and Sarah Birkett. Her father was a chandler and in 1784 the family moved to Dublin. They were a Quaker family. Her uncle was the abolitionist George Harrison, one of the founders of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. The Birkett family were middle class and while less strict and plain, as Quakers they stood apart from their Irish neighbours, remaining more connected to their links in Britain and their English identity. Card was educated in music, art, French, drawing and literature. She married Nathaniel Card in 1801. He was a second cousin and a merchant in Dublin. The couple had eight children but only four survived infancy. The family business had financial difficulties which she discusses in her writings. She wrote a significant number of poems while staying with an American Quaker family in Milford Haven in 1804. The Rotch family lived in Castle Hall and entertained people from