Infamous Irishman’s part in the slave trade

How a scholar in Greek language and literature who studied at Trinity College Dublin became involved in an infamous incident in the notorious African slave trade is in some ways the conundrum of western civilisation. That supposedly civilised people versed in the Enlightenment values of reason and equality could perform acts of great evil on their fellow humans is simply baffling.

Joseph Wall was born in Dublin in 1873 and was raised a Catholic before attending Trinity College. A man acquainted with the works of Homer and Socrates carried out an act of exceptional depravity that echoed down the centuries in military history.