Upon the granting of the charter the name was changed to the “Sierra Leone Company.” To Sierra Leone had been brought in 1787 loyal free negroes, who had fought on the British side during the American War of Independence, and were therefore given their liberty, but whom it was thought better to deport to a climate more suitable to Africans than that of Nova Scotia, where they were at first disbanded. Then were sent out about 400 masterless negroes picked up in England after the judicial decision obtained by Granville Sharp as to the illegality of slavery in England. These were known as the “Granvilles.” To them were added later the “Maroons[112]”—Jamaica negroes mixed in a slight degree with the blood of the extinct West Indian natives, who had taken to the bush in Jamaica, and were making themselves troublesome. Further, as soon as Sierra Leone was adopted as the dumping ground of the slaves set free from the captured slave-trading ships, there were added to these ex-slaves of America and England the heterogeneous sweepings of West, Central, and South-east Africa, generally known as “Willyfoss Niggers,” because their freedom was originally due to the exertions of Mr Wilberforce. Then of course there were the original Timne, Bullom, Mendi, and Susu inhabitants; so that altogether the negro population of modern Sierra Leone is an extraordinarily mixed stock, to which a large colony of Kruboys from the Liberian coast has since been added. The philanthropic company which started this settlement in 1787 had some quaint notions in its inception. Sixty London prostitutes were sent out to Sierra Leone to marry with the negroes and become honest women, while numbers of English, Dutch, and Swedes were invited to go there as free settlers, under the belief that West Africa was as suited for European colonization as Cape Colony. The result was of course that nearly all these European immigrants died a few years after their arrival, though not before they had left their impression upon the strangely mixed population of Sierra Leone. The whole settlement had to be begun over again in 1791.