The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis is a Registered Scottish Charity focusing on raising awareness of the many aspects of the Glasgow Necropolis which opened in 1833. Many of Glasgow’s Merchants and other wealthy inhabitants of Glasgow are buried here.
Glasgow became the centre of an economic boom which involved the trafficking of enslaved Africans in the early 18th c. The city dominated the tobacco and sugar trade and the Tobacco Lords and Sugar Princes became the elite of Glasgow making their wealth from that boom. They built townhouses, churches, public buildings and established estates around the city.
By the time the Necropolis opened the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans had been abolished by the British Parliament and chattel slavery was about to end. However we have identified 23 occupants in the Glasgow Necropolis who are listed on The Legacies of British Slavery Database (www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/) and have connections with enslavement. We acknowledge that these 23 people and their families, with monuments and/or memorials in the Necropolis, either owned enslaved people, benefitted from wealth generated from their labour or inherited this wealth.
Glasgow also played a major role in the abolition of Slavery. The Glasgow Emancipation Society founded in 1833 played an influential role in the abolition of slavery elsewhere in the world. Some of its office-bearers are buried in the Glasgow Necropolis.
We dedicate this page to, and acknowledge the brutal history of, those enslaved Africans who lived during this period of Glasgow’s economic past.