BLACK LONDON Life before Emancipation ^^^^k iff'/J9^l BHv^MMiai>'^ii,k'' 5-- d^fli BP* ^B Br mL ^^ " ^B H N^ ^1 J '' j^' • 1 • GRETCHEN HOLBROOK GERZINA BLACK LONDON Other books by the author Carrington: A Life BLACK LONDON Life before Emancipation Gretchen Gerzina dartmouth college library Hanover Dartmouth College Library https://www.dartmouth.edu/~library/digital/publishing/ © 1995 Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina All rights reserved First published in the United States in 1995 by Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey First published in Great Britain in 1995 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd. The Library of Congress cataloged the paperback edition as: Gerzina, Gretchen. Black London: life before emancipation / Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0-8135-2259-5 (alk. paper) 1. Blacks—England—London—History—18th century. 2. Africans— England—London—History—18th century. 3. London (England)— History—18th century. I. title. DA676.9.B55G47 1995 305.896´0421´09033—dc20 95-33060 CIP To Pat Kaufman and John Stathatos Contents Illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi 1. Paupers and Princes: Repainting the Picture of Eighteenth-Century England 1 2. High Life below Stairs 29 3. What about Women? 68 4. Sharp and Mansfield: Slavery in the Courts 90 5. The Black Poor 133 6. The End of English Slavery 165 Notes 205 Bibliography 227 Index Illustrations (between pages 116 and 111) 1. 'Heyday! is this my daughter Anne'. S.H. Grimm, del. Pub­ lished 14 June 1771 in Drolleries, p. 6. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 2. 'Kitchin Stuff. Rowlandson, del. Published 1 November 1810. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 3. 'Flunkeys Indulging Themselves at the Draper's Door'. Heath (?). Published 1830 in 'Nuisances of London', The hook­ ing Glass. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 4. 'Loo in the Kitchin, or High Life Below Stairs'. Woodward, after Cruikshank, 1799. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 5. 'The D of playing at Foils with her favourite Lap Dog Mungo after near £10000 to make him a ' William Austin. Published 1 May 1773. Courtesy of the Print Collec­ tion, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 6. Portrait of Francis Williams. Anonymous, c. 1740. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum. 7. Portrait of Francis Barber. Attributed to James Northcote. Courtesy of Dr Johnson's House Trust. 8. Portrait of Ignatius Sancho, artist and date unknown. Cour­ tesy of the Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 9. 'Foot Pad's - Or Much Ado About Nothing'. Isaac Cruik­ shank, del. Published 4 May 1795. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. 10. 'The Hay-Loft Plot of Thistlewood and his 24 Conspirators at 8 O'Clock in Cato Street Edgeware Road London'. IX Illustrations C. Williams. Published February 1820 in Caricatures, Vol. X. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 11. 'The Sailor's Description of a Chase & Capture'. Lieut. John Sheringham, R.N. Published 7 January 1822. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 12. 'Gustavus Vassa, or Olaudah Equiano'. Anonymous c. 1789. Courtesy of the Photographs and Prints Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library, As tor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 13. 'Joseph Johnson'. John Thomas Smith. Published in Vaga- bondia; or Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London, 31 December 1815. 14. 'Charles M'Gee'. John Thomas Smith. Published in Vaga- bondia; or Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through the Streets of London, 31 December 1815. 15. 'The Sharp Family'. Johann Zoffany, 1779-81. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Lloyd-Baker Trustees. 16. 'William Murray, Lord Mansfield'. J.S. Copley, 1783. Cour­ tesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. 17. 'The Generous Master or African Sincerity, a West-India Anecdote'. Argus del [C. Williams]. Published in Caricatures, Vol. X, 9 January 1819. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 18. 'A Mungo Macaroni'. M. Darly. Published 10 September 1772. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Lib­ rary, Yale University. 19. 'Slave Trade 1: Slaves in Bondage'. Anonymous, undated. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 20. 'Slave Trade 2: In full enjoyment of liberty'. Anonymous, undated. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 21. 'The New Union Club'. [Marryat] - G. Cruickshank (?). Pub­ lished 19 July 1819. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. 22. 'The Country Concert'. C.L. Smith. Published 10 July 1794. Courtesy of the Print Collection, Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University. x Acknowledgements I wish to thank the following people and institutions: The Dean and Chapter of York Minister, for their kind permission to use Granville Sharp's letter book. The Sierra Leone Collection, Special Collections, the University Library, the University of Illinois in Chicago, for the use of letters from Sierra Leone settlers. The New York Historical Society, for the use of Granville Sharp's transcripts and notes on the court cases of Thomas Lewis and James Somerset, located in their 'B.V. Sec. Slavery' collection. The New York Public Library, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, for the portraits of Ignatius Sancho and Olaudah Equiano. The National Portrait Gallery, London, for the portrait of William Murray, Lord Mansfield. For the use of the painting The Sharp Family by Johann Zoffany, I am grateful to the National Portrait Gallery, London and the Lloyd-Baker Trustees. The Lewis Walpole Library of Yale University, Farmington, Con­ necticut, for the use of illustrations. Particular thanks to Joan H. Sussler, Curator of Prints. The Trustees of the British Museum, for the use of illustrations from the Department of Prints and Drawings. The Earl of Mansfield, for the use of the portrait of Lady Elizabeth Finch Hatton and Dido by Johann Zoffany. The Trustees of the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston, Stafford- XI Acknowledgements shire, for the photograph of the Slave Medallion by Josiah Wedgwood. The Public Record Office, London, for the use of materials on the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor. The many libraries which assisted in my research, especially the Houghton Library and Widener Library of Harvard University; the British Library; the University of Texas at Austin; and especi­ ally the library and interlibrary loan office of Vassar College. This book could not have been written without those whose important work preceded it, particularly Peter Fryer, Folarin Shyllon and James Walvin. Special thanks to those editors who believed in this project: Grant Mclntyre, Kate Chenevix Trench and Leslie Mitchner. xn CHAPTER ONE Paupers and Princes: Repainting the Picture of Eighteenth-Century England One morning in 1765, Granville Sharp literally fell over the man who would change the course of not only his life but also those of thousands of black people in England. Going to visit his physician brother William at Mincing Lane, off Fenchurch Street, he en­ countered a battered seventeen-year-old African slave named Jonathan Strong, who was seeking free medical help at Dr Sharp's surgery. His master had long treated him violently and now, pistol-whipped, lame, feverish and nearly blind, Strong had finally been turned out into the streets as useless and nearly dead. Dr Sharp admitted him into St Bartholomew's Hospital and months later, when he had recovered, the brothers found a position for him with a local apothecary. This happy resolution ended two years later when Strong's pre­ vious master discovered him running an errand for his new employer. Seeing him fit and healthy he arranged for Strong to be kidnapped and jailed, preparatory to being sold and shipped to a Barbados plantation. West Indian slavery meant almost certain early and painful death, and in desperation Strong sent for Granville Sharp from his imprisonment at Poultney Compter (or Counter), not realizing - or perhaps not caring - that Sharp had forgotten who he was. When Sharp arrived he was startled into a clear and sudden understanding of slavery in Britain which changed and challenged his world view. He had, of course, been seeing black people for most of his life, probably even in Durham, his childhood home, 1 Paupers and Princes but it was not until they became unified and personified by one individual that they came into focus for him. Like one who buys a red coat and then discovers that everyone around him seems to be wearing one, Sharp's London seemed suddenly populated by thousands of black people living and working under a legal system which recognized most of them only as property and denied them the most fundamental of rights. He was no social activist, but a modestly educated clerk with a meticulous and highly developed religious sense which carried him into a relentless battle for justice. Yet he, like most abolitionists, never became a proponent of racial equality even while devoting his life to racial justice. As with Sharp, once the lens through which we view the eight­ eenth century is refocused, the London of Johnson, Reynolds, Hogarth and Pope - that elegant, feisty, intellectual and earthy place of neo-classicism and city chaos - becomes occupied by a parallel world of Africans and their descendants working and living alongside the English. They answer their doors, run their errands, carry their purchases, wear their livery, appear in their lawcourts, play their music, drink in their taverns, write in their newspapers, appear in their novels, poems and plays, sit for their portraits, appear in their caricatures and marry their servants. They also have private lives and baptize their own children, attend schools, bury their dead.