1807 he married Hannah Gurney, sister of the celebrated
Elizabeth Fry. As his means were not sufficient to support his family, he
entered in 1808 the brewery of Truman, Hanbury & Company, of which his
uncles, the Hanburys, were partners. He devoted himself to business with
characteristic energy, became a partner in 1811, and soon had the whole
concern in his hands. In 1816 he brought himself into notice by his speech
on behalf of the Spitalfields weavers, and in 1818 he published his able
_Inquiry into Prison Discipline_. The same year he was elected M.P. for
Weymouth, a borough for which he continued to sit till 1837. In the House
of Commons he had a high reputation as an able and straightforward speaker,
devoted to philanthropic schemes. Of these plans the most important was
that for the abolition of slavery in the British colonies. Buxton devoted
his life to this object, and through defeat and opposition, despite the
attacks of enemies and the remonstrances of faint-hearted friends, he
remained true to it. Not till 1833 was he successful, and even then only
partially, for he was compelled to admit into the bill some clauses against
which his better judgment had decided. In 1837 he ceased to [v.04 p.0893]
sit in the House of Commons. He travelled on the continent in 1839 to
recruit his health, which had given way, and took the opportunity of
inspecting foreign prisons. He was made a baronet in 1840, and then devoted
himself to a plan for ameliorating the condition of the African natives.
The failure of the Niger expedition of 1841 was a blow from which he never
recovered. He died on the 19th of February 1845.

See _Memoir and Correspondence of Sir T.F. Buxton_ (1848), by his third
son, Charles Buxton (1823-1871), a well-known philanthropist and member of
parliament.

BUXTON, a market town and fashionable health-resort in the High Peak
parliamentary division of Derbyshire, England, on the London &
North-Western and Midland railways, 36 m. N.W. by N. of Derby. Pop. of
urban district (1901) 10,181. It occupies a high position, lying between
1000 and 1150 ft. above sea-level, in an open hollow, surrounded at a
distance by hills of considerable elevation, except on the south-east side,
where the Wye, which rises about half a mile away, makes its exit. The old
town (High Buxton) stands a little above the new, and consists of one wide
street, and a considerable market-place with an old cross. The new town is
the richer porti