On 2 April 1792, William Wilberforce, the parliamentary voice of abolition, exposed Captain Kimber in the House of Commons, singling him out for the vicious, atrocious and fatal whipping of an enslaved African girl. What he actually said is not altogether clear. This may surprise some readers, but the fact is there was no official record of the Commons debates in the eighteenth century. Reporters had only been admitted to the Commons’ chamber in St Stephen's Chapel in 1771, and a designated reporters’ gallery did not appear until 1835. Before that, writers jostled with one another in the overhead galleries to hear speech after speech, and in the absence of shorthand committed much to memory. In earlier decades, when the publication of debates was illegal, clever scribes like Dr Samuel Johnson fabricated much of the debate. In the Gentleman's Magazine, he wove a tapestry of speeches delivered to the ‘Senate of Lilliput’ that was predominantly Johnsonian; what the good doctor imagined or remembered people saying. Reporters strove for more authenticity in the 1790s; they had to cater to a curious public who expected a reasonably accurate account of what went on in the House in the middle pages of the tri-weeklies. Yet speeches had to be edited to accommodate the allotted space for parliamentary debate in four-page productions, and they were printed off quickly for an attentive market. In the 2 April debate on abolition, William Woodfall of the Diary admitted he produced his version with ‘more than common haste’, offering only a ‘sketch’ of its character. He didn't need to apologise. Transforming a debate of twelve hours into four columns of newsprint entailed savage editing. Disagreement of what should be emphasised and what was said was inevitable, especially if the House was noisy and crowded. In fact, since the House could only sit 427 of the 558 British MPs, people stood in the gangways during an especially important discussion and muffled the voices of the major speakers.

Captain Kimber's name surfaced on two occasions in Wilberforce's long speech to the Commons on the evening of 2 April.