Britain’s slavery records go online

UK: Britain said yesterday it was putting colonial slavery records online for the first time, an archive which will eventually cover three million slaves in South Africa, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean.

The collection on the ancestry.co.uk website is taken from registers lodged between 1812 and 1834.

Britain has been celebrating the bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. It was passed on March 25, 1807, imposing a 100-pound fine for every slave found aboard a British ship.