As formerly enslaved people themselves, the Bombay Africans were keen to free as many enslaved Africans as they could. Rabai and Freretown initially received runaway enslaved people from along the coast, including from the island of Mombasa. This created tension in 1880 between Freretown and the slave owners of Mombasa, which led to the manufacturing of sandbags, defences and rockets in Freretown. The British consul was called to intervene. A commission found that 1,421 enslaved Africans had been given asylum at the missions; 933 of them were at Rabai. To appease the slave owners, the British consul agreed on a compensation of 25 dollars per head to be paid to the local slave owners. Each enslaved African at Rabai was granted a certificate of freedom on New Year's Day in 1889. William Jones was the leading figure in these events and the prime abolitionist in the coastal area in the 1880s, much to the concern of British authorities. His view was that Christianity and emancipation had to be synonymous, and he acted beyond the confines of the law in the Sultan of Zanzibar's dominion, the subsequent Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) and indeed the hierarchy of the Anglican church (Harris, 1977, pp. 36-40). These actions paved the way for the abolition of slavery in the East African Protectorate in 1907. The first mission school