They stayed first in Leeds, with the abolitionist Wilson Armistead. Harriet Martineau, the writer and social reformer who was one of the most prominent voices in the British reform movement, arranged for them to attend a school in Surrey — a village school where, among younger students, they continued and deepened the literacy education that had begun in the Ivens farmhouse. For perhaps three years they were students.
Then they settled in Hammersmith, in west London, where they would spend most of their nearly two decades in England. Their house became a meeting place for the British abolitionist movement, hosting prominent figures from the reform world. Ellen supported work in women’s suffrage alongside the antislavery cause. William developed connections related to West Africa, focused specifically on efforts to disrupt the slave trade at its commercial roots.
## The Great Exhibition of 1851 and Ellen’s Letter
In June 1851 — six months after arriving in England — they attended the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. The Exhibition was a celebration of international industrial progress, sponsored by the British Crown, attended by visitors from around the world. The American display was one of its features.
The Crafts walked through that American display arm-in-arm with white abolitionists. This was a deliberate, public act. The visual fact of it — an interracial group walking together through a showcase of American achievement, during a period when American law explicitly classified people like Ellen and William as property — made a statement that needed no accompanying text.
The following year, 1852, reports circulated in pro-slavery American newspapers that Ellen Craft missed her enslaver and wished to return to slavery. These reports were, almost certainly, designed to undermine the Crafts’ credibility as lecturers and advocates. Ellen responded with a public letter. The letter’s most frequently quoted line is its refutation of everything those reports claimed: she would “much rather starve in England, a free woman, than be a slave” for any man in America.