Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (28th April 1801 - 1st October 1885)

Lord Ashley, although born into a rich and privileged family, did not have a happy childhood; his parents did not show him much love, and his father was quite unkind. However, he had a nurse, Maria, who he afterwards described as his best friend. She loved him, told him stories, read the bible to him, and taught him her simple Christian faith. Although she died when he was only ten and away at school, he always retained the faith she passed on to him, and it became the driving force of his life's work.

Ashley was to become one of the greatest social reformers this country ever knew, ranking alongside William Wilberforce, who spent his life campaigning to abolish slavery. The law to abolish slavery in the British Empire was passed in 1833, a couple of weeks after the death of Wilberforce. Ashley (just beginning his lifelong campaign for bringing freedom to children - the 'little white slaves') had attended his funeral, and so the lives and work of Britain's two greatest social reformers briefly overlapped.