Elizabeth Heyrick (née Coltman; 4 December 1769– 18 October 1831) was an English philanthropist and campaigner against the slave trade.Born in Leicester, Elizabeth was the daughter of John Coltman, a manufacturer of worsted cloth and a Unitarian. Her mother, Elizabeth Cartwright, was a poet and writer. She met John Wesley when he visited the family and initially practised Methodism.In 1787 she wed John Heyrick,but the marriage wasn't happy due to John's illness and temperament. After her husband's death in 1795, she became a Quaker and then took to social reform, becoming one of the most prominent radical women activists of the 1820s.In the early 19th century, the prominent leaders of the British abolitionist movement, William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson, believed that when the slave trade was abolished in 1807, slavery itself would gradually die out. However, without legislation, planters refused to relinquish their enslaved property.As a strong supporter of immediate and complete emancipation, she decided to address the leaders of the abolitionist movement.Aiming to promote public awareness of the issues of the slave trade and hit the profits of planters and of importers of slave-produced goods, Heyrick encouraged a social movement to boycott sugar from the West Indies, visiting grocers' shops in Leicester to persuade them not to stock it. Heyrick believed that women should be involved in these issues as they were qualified "not only to sympathise with suffering, but also to plead for the oppressed."
Heyrick was a founding member of the Birmingham Ladies Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves in 1825.Elizabeth Heyrick was concerned with the welfare of long-term prisoners and worked as a prison visitor. In 1809 she prevented a bull-baiting contest by purchasing the bull. She was the author of more than 20 pamphlets and other writings on those subjects and others such as war, the poor, vagrancy, wages, corporal punishment and electoral reform. Towards the end of her life she became involved in the campaign against capital punishment.After Elizabeth's death, the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 put one of her major social ambitions into practice.