There is considerable debate public about institutionalised racism and the way that the profits from slavery have funded contemporary institutions and businesses. It also shines a spotlight on the business of history; whose history is recorded, who is commemorated, what assumptions have passed unchallenged and how do we ensure that the field of history reflects all our histories not just that of a privileged few. In this piece, I want to look at one aspect of local history; the lost histories of black Britons in the Midlands before the First World War.
It is
commonly assumed that black Britons are generally descendants of the Windrush
generation. However, their story goes back much further than that.
Black Britons appear in the records from the mid-seventeenth century onwards,
albeit in small numbers. It is shocking to learn that the last recorded slave
sale in the Midlands took place in 1771 in Lichfield. There were others before
that, and it is quite likely sales continued in a less public fashion until
slavery was finally abolished in 1834. Slave markets were not confined to the
USA.
When
studying the records of this period, it is worth noting that the language can
be at the very least ambiguous and inaccurate. It can also be shocking to our
contemporary ears; people may be described as black, coloured, negro or any one
of several other terms covering peoples from a range of cultural and
geographical backgrounds. There was no systematic gathering of
information, no neat boxes demanding their origins on forms, and little
knowledge amongst the native population of the world beyond these shores. So even the little information we have may be
distorted by the language of the past.
Servants,
poor people, women and children are always underrepresented in recorded history.
Add to this the fact that many ordinary lives are undocumented and many records
are lost so that generally, we have only a limited window on the past. Before the mid-20th century, the number of
people of colour in the UK was very small. The SCAWDI (Sparkbrook Caribbean and
African Women's Development Initiative) project found just 246 records of black individuals living
in the Midlands between 1650 and 1918. What we have therefore are glimpses,
people who would have thought themselves unexceptional but become exceptional
merely by the survival of their histories.
So who
were these people? What do we know about their lives? When do they start
to appear in the records? In the tide of migration that accompanied the turmoil
of the Civil Wars, there is a very early sighting of a possible black family; they
appear in a set of Parish Constables accounts recorded in rural Shropshire in
1640. Sadly, we have no details, no names, and we do not know where they were
heading to or from. The next recorded sighting in Shropshire is in 1679, a
gardener named Samson is recorded as working at Llanforda Hall near Oswestry.
Given the tiny numbers could Samson have been one of the people travelling
through the remote Shropshire parish of Worfield in 1640? Black people
were scattered through other rural areas too. In Bishop's Castle, there is the
grave of "A Native of Africa" buried in 1801. At St. Lawrence's church, Oxhill there is the
grave of Myrtilla "a negro slave" who died in 1705.
The black
people who do appear in 18th-century records are often recorded as
servants rather than slaves, but this is probably deceptive. In the period up to the early
19th century, it was not uncommon for landowners to have "servants"
whose origins were in the USA. It is
unlikely that they had much choice about coming to England, and many probably
had little freedom of movement or of employment however they are denoted in the parish records.
Not all black Midlanders are servants
though; some live independently amongst other working-class families, others
are serving or former military musicians. And, not all are working-class; Jane
Harry was the daughter of a Jamaican judge and governess to the children of banking
magnate Sampson Lloyd.
The
conditions of their lives varied greatly too. It is suggested that Samuel
Greatheed, the builder of Guy's Cliff House in Warwickshire, brought over slaves,
that were housed in caves under the building, to save him paying wages to local workers. Conversely, Thomas Otempora was described by
his employer Viscount Valentia as "a good servant and a most trusty
friend." George Africanus (who was born in Sierra Leone) was a former slave of the Molineux family of
Wolverhampton. He moved to Nottingham and set up an employment agency for ex-slaves in
the late 18th century (suggesting a community large enough to make it worth his
while).
From the
19th century onwards black Britons are more rarely described as servants as
they move into a broader range of occupations. The Rev. Peter Stanford was
an ex-slave, who became the minister of Hope Street Baptist Church. Many
black Midlanders were former seamen having arrived via Britain's trading
routes. Some took up the sometimes-lucrative practice of prizefighting; James
Munroe, who fought under the name Jemmy the Black, earned £10 per match. Thomas
Richards was a pavement artist in West Bromwich. His grandfather was a
black ex-slave, brought to Wolverhampton as a domestic servant. Still, others
were entertainers such as John Alexander Johnson who was a comedian and musician
from New York and whose daughter "Hettie" Johnson was a successful
stage actor.
What we
have therefore are glimpses, people who would have thought themselves
unexceptional but become exceptional merely by the survival of their histories.
With such a small sample, it is easy to extrapolate lives that may not reflect
real or broader experiences. But this is all we have, a little
reminder that black Britons have been contributing to the culture and economy
of the UK for hundreds of years. We know as historians that there is more to be
discovered and much more to be revisited and reappraised. We should be inspired
by the Black Lives Matter movement and as citizen historians should re-examine
what we think we know. We need to look for the evidence that, although often
hard to spot, is all around us and use this to build a more accurate, more
inclusive history.
Further Reading
The Black
Presence in the West Midlands, 1650–1918 DI. Callaghan
Black and
British, David
Olusoga
Black
History Sources in Birmingham City Archives F. Tait,
www.connectinghistories.org.uk/birmingham-stories/birmingham-stories-faces-places/
www.birmingham.gov.uk/info/50134/archives_and_collections/1580/black_history_collection/5
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