had the right to refer a number of his workers from New Lanark and between 1795 and 1803 he personally referred some 64 patients. Dale's views on slavery The raw cotton used in Dale's cotton mills came from three principal sources, the United States, South America and the West Indies, and were produced in those regions via slave labour. However, by the late 18th century, attitudes to slavery were beginning to change and the fledgling British abolitionist movement was rapidly gaining pace. The abolitionist movement in Britain was led by Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, who oversaw the actions of the London Society, which sent representatives across the country seeking support for anti-slavery petitions. The Glasgow Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was set up in January 1791, with Dale as the chairman. In the same year, he bought shares in the newly-formed Sierra Leone Company which sought to establish a colony of freed slaves in West Africa. The Glasgow group publicised the London Society’s pamphlet, with a Preface about the new Glasgow Society. There were various meetings throughout 1791, all chaired by Dale, and the Society sent 100 guineas to the London campaign offices. The following year, it met on a number of occasions in support of the various public petitions which were being drawn up in all the cities and towns in Scotland. At a General Meeting of the Glasgow Society on 1 February 1792, with Dale in the Chair, the members resolved;…that the traffic in the human species is founded on the grossest injustice, is attended with the utmost cruelty and barbarity to an innocent race of men and is productive of ruin and desolation of a country which the efforts of the well-directed industry of Great Britain might contribute to civilise.On Commerce and the Enlightenment it said:[the slave trade]…is directly repugnant to the primary laws of nature…and that its continuance, in this enlightened age, is disgraceful to the nation and utterly inconsistant (sic) with the profession of Christians. Death When Dale died at his home, Rosebank House in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire on 7 March 1806, huge crowds of mourners lined the streets of Glasgow. He was buried in the Ramshorn Cemetery in central Glasgow in a plot he had purchased some years before. The grave lies on the outer east wall towards the north-east corner. The Glasgow Herald’s obituary of him acknowledged his achievements as