Portrait of Robert Wedderburn from his 1824 book The Horrors of Slavery. However, perhaps best of all is the record of Robert Wedderburn’s trial of 1820. It seems strange that the name of Robert Wedderburn has been virtually entirely ignored. Robert Wedderburn was born in Jamaica in 1762, the son of an African-born slave named Rosanna. But unlike the declared atheist Carlile, Wedderburn professed himself a Christian and did not reject an interventionist God, thus justifying prayer.