Lists, we all make them – shopping lists, ‘to do’ lists that never seem to get any shorter (come to think of it, that seems to apply to shopping lists too in this household!).
In his latest article, John Ellis draws attention to the lists that a historian with an interest in Black British history might draw on, they include: enslaved people (on vessels and in plantations); muster lists of Black Loyalists (from the American War of Independence); and liberated people (‘The Book of Negroes’, 1783). I would add to that the lists of the London Black poor compiled by the authorities in the 1780s and lists of names of men, women and children transported to Australia – lists that between them contain thousands of names. Names but, usually, little else. Each name on any of these lists represents a human being, they each lived a life and had some sort of story to tell but we rarely have any idea what their story was. A list captured their name in a moment in time and that was it.
I have looked at these lists myself at various times and have sometimes wondered about the possibility of finding the same person in more than one of them – that might start to piece together a life story. To do that requires patience, determination and a good slice of luck. I have never really had the first (or second) of those in sufficient quantity to get past the ‘wondering’ stage. Fortunately, John Ellis is made of sterner stuff:
For over twenty five years I have been compiling a database of Black soldiers who served in the Crown (or ‘King’s’) regiments of the British Army in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Very occasionally, an individual can be identified on more than one list. Daniel Green is one such individual.
We pride ourselves at Historycal Roots on presenting original research, new stories that you won’t find elsewhere, but occasionally we come across something too good not to share. With thanks to Audrey Dewjee for bringing it to our attention, we highly recommend this programme from the BBC:
Because it is on IPlayer it can only be accessed from within the UK and it is only available for a limited period of time (about a month), so do watch it while you can. The programme is presented by Griff Rhys Jones whose father was a doctor in the British Army during World War Two. Jones senior was sent to Burma as part of British efforts to fend off Japanese attempts to invade India. Key to the campaign was the use of Black soldiers from West Africa (The Gold Coast, now Ghana). Whilst I was aware of the Burma campaign, the fact that Black African soldiers played such an important role was entirely new to me. A number of the veterans are still alive and share their memories.
Griff Rhys Jones sums up:
A lot of people are completely unaware that a huge amount of the fighting was done by Indian, Gurkha and African troops.
Audrey Dewjee has alerted us to the sad news that Sir Geoff Palmer has passed. He was best known as a brilliant scientist but he understood the importance of Black History and devoted much of his later years to research and sharing what he knew. He was a great role model and inspiration for the young.
Now considered an intellectual giant, when he arrived in Britain in 1955 he was labelled “educationally subnormal” by the racist education system of the time.
He went on to become professor emeritus in the School of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University and this article about him was published on the Edinburgh University website in June 2024: https://global.ed.ac.uk/uncovered/1960/geoff-palmer
For the past four years Barbara Ellis has produced a ‘Lest We Forget’ calendar commemorating the contribution of men and women of colour from the Caribbean to the British war effort in the two World Wars. We have them all.
You won’t be able to read the text in the following images but they give you an idea of the overall approach.
We have kept them because, in addition to being a wall calendar for the year, they each contain a wealth of Black British history. For each month there is a meticulously researched article about a particular person or on a theme. Honestly, if you could take the articles from the four years and put them together, you would get a great book about Black British history full of stories that are new to you.
The calendar costs £10 but, for obvious reasons, Barbara will sell the few she has left for £5. If you are interested you can contact her here:
babarasellis4(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)gmail.com
Please be patient as we know that she is lucky enough to be on holiday at the moment.
While we have your attention, a subscriber asked if we could make the link to the list of prisoners of colour in Newgate gaol produced by John Ellis more accessible – your wish is our command! Here it is:
We started this website in 2016 partly because we kept coming across stories from Black British history that we didn’t know about. Sometimes they were stories that we should have known but had simply missed, but often they were stories that were tucked away in obscure places that needed a lot of effort to find. We felt that much of this hidden history deserved to be more widely known. On the home page of the site we express this as
‘we are keen to raise awareness of the black and mixed heritage people who have played a part in shaping the way society looks today but whose role has been overlooked or not given the credit they are due’
We started to do our own research aimed at bringing previously untold stories into the light and we had some early successes. But we have been greatly helped by the contributions of Bill Hern, Audrey Dewjee and John Ellis, who share our passion.
This preamble introduces you to fresh contributions from Audrey and John.
It seems to us that Audrey has done more to identify the presence of Black and mixed heritage women from the Caribbean in the armed services during WW2 than anyone else. Today we publish her third article on the subject. In the previous two she has written about women from the Caribbean who served in the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British Army), in her third article she turns her attention to the WAAF (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force).
Sonia Thompson
Alma La Badie
Pearl Harry
Through painstaking research she has identified the names of almost a hundred women from the Caribbean who served in the WAAF. Many were white but some were Black or of mixed heritage. Fascinating in its own right, the article also offers a gateway for anyone interested in doing further research in this area. Audrey tells us what became of the handful of the women after the war but, as she herself acknowledges, there is much, much more to find. If one of these ladies was an ancestor of yours we would love to hear from you!
Meanwhile John Ellis has also been busy. He has previously written about women of colour in Newgate Gaol in the nineteenth century but, during the course of his research for that article, he actually identified all those of colour, men and women, who are mentioned in the prison records. John believes this list quite possibly contains the largest number of references to individuals of colour for this period thus far identified. He has not researched the men but, as with Audrey’s article, there is a wealth of information that might be of use to anyone researching the history of this period. A link to the database including all the information John discovered has now been added to the original article, there are a large number of ‘people of colour’ previously unknown to history:
John Richards, on the right (image shared by Arthur Torrington of the Windrush Foundation)
It is very sad to report that John Richards, one of the passengers on the Empire Windrush when it docked at Tilbury in May 1948, passed away on 10th March at the age of ninety-eight. John featured in a number of iconic images, not least the one above. John is on the right and, as you can see, he was a very snappy dresser!
The other two men in the photo are John Hazel (on the left), a boxer who settled in Liverpool, and Harold Wilmot, a member of the Southlanders vocal group and father of the entertainer Gary Wilmot.
We were privileged to meet John several times and he was a courteous and modest man, a real gentleman. He will be sadly missed by all those who knew him.
There are many ways we can demonstrate the pre-Windrush Black presence in Britain, regular contributor, John Ellis, shows three of them in a series of articles just published on this site.
The criminal justice system
An increasing number of historic records from the criminal justice system are being digitised and made available online. John has utilised the records from Newgate Gaol and the Old Bailey in earlier articles, now he turns his attention to Dorchester Prison for the years 1782 to 1901. From the records kept by the jailers, John has identified almost fifty inmates who passed through the doors of the jail who were ‘of colour’. This is, of course, a tiny proportion of the total number of prisoners. As you would expect a variety of crimes were recorded against the names. The most common (eighteen cases) was ‘vagrancy’, something we would refer to now as ‘rough sleeping’. These ‘vagrants’ were most probably men tramping across the county in search of work but ‘rough sleeping’ had been criminalised by the Vagrancy Act of 1824 and these men were found guilty of it.
One of the prisoners had been found guilty of blasphemy. This was Robert Wedderburn. He was closely associated with a group plotting to overthrow the Government, the plot, known as the Cato Street conspiracy, was betrayed by an informer and five of the conspirators went to the gallows in May 1820. Wedderburn could very well have been one of them had he not been arrested in November 1819 and held without trial in Newgate for two months before being transferred to Dorchester in May 1820. His time locked up in prison, just a few miles away from the site of the conspiracy, probably saved his life.
By identifying the names of these men, John has opened the door to further research by those interested in tracing their ancestors, researching local history or doing academic research.
Royal Navy pension records are another invaluable source as they often use ‘black’ or ‘of colour’ as descriptive terms for men who served. John has written many articles utilising these records and, in his latest, he introduces us to the career of George Barton. Born in Jamaica, possibly in 1896, how he came to be in the Royal Navy is not known but he went on to serve on at least fourteen ships between 1814 and 1834. He served in a range of roles but mostly as a cook. When not at sea he lived in Portsmouth and it was here that he married once and possibly twice.
On 3rd September 1839, he married Amelia Bowers at St. Mary’s church, Portsea.[1]https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcript?id=GBPRS%2FPORTSMOUTH%2FMAR%2F00065069%2F1&tab=this The record shows him to be a ‘widower’ which clearly suggests he had been married before although the identity of his first wife cannot be established with certainty. Amelia was a widow. Interestingly, the 1851 census shows her birthplace as Jamaica and George and Amelia are both designated as ‘people of colour’. At the time of the census they had four children.
British Army service and pension records are another invaluable source and John has identified many Black soldiers using these records. His latest ‘find’ is Huntley Hugh Lecesne who served during the First World War, initially with the Middlesex Regiment before transferring to the Machine Gun Corps. What is particularly interesting about him is that in November 1915 he paid his own fare to cross the Atlantic and enlist in Britain.
He was not the only man to take matters into his own hands when it came to joining the fray. Early in 1915, frustrated at their inability to enlist in the Caribbean, seven men stowed away on the SS Danube bound for England with the intention of enlisting when they landed. Once the ship was at sea they were discovered and agreed to work their passage for the remainder of the voyage. But when they landed, they were arrested and taken to court where the magistrate proceeded to denigrate and mock them. They were remanded for a week and then shipped back to the Caribbean. What became of them is hard to establish, however, the historian David Olusoga has tracked down Royal Navy service records for three of them and two of them received the Mercantile Marine Medal awarded for service in hostile waters.[2]‘Black and British: A Forgotten Story’ (p.433) by David Olusoga, Macmillan, 2016 Private Lecesne was fortunate to have been received rather more warmly when he arrived.
He survived the war and tried to reclaim the cost of his fare but the War Office was having none of it! He returned to Jamaica where he married at least once and fathered at least one child. Sadly he died of heart disease at the age of thirty-six with the cause of death shown as ‘aortic regurgitation and exhaustion’.
My first introduction to Marika Sherwood was at a 2-day conference held in Nottingham in 1993. I attended along with two friends, my husband and our 5-year-old son.
During a recent phone conversation with Lucy MacKeith, another pioneer of Black History research, Lucy asked me, ‘Do you remember the best Black History conference ever?’ and I knew exactly which one she was referring to. The conference took place on the weekend of 16th and 17th October 1993 and it truly deserves to be remembered. It was organised by the Association for the Study of African, Caribbean and Asian Culture and History in Britain or ASACACHIB (thankfully, this long title was subsequently changed to BASA, the Black and Asian Studies Association) and, according to Hakim Adi’s report on the conference in ASACACHIB Newsletter No. 8, ‘Marika Sherwood singlehandedly organised the event.’
At the time I hadn’t yet joined ASACACHIB, so I was largely unaware of who were its members, but I remember meeting Marika, Hakim Adi and Sean Creighton in Nottingham.
The Conference, dedicated to the memory of Peter Blackman[1]Peter Blackman (1909-1993) https://irr.org.uk/article/restoring-peter-blackman/ who had died the previous August, was entitled ‘Black Peoples in Britain: Local Histories’. A mix of academic and community speakers made presentations on the history of a wide variety of locations including Wellingborough, Northampton, Bute Town (Cardiff), Devon, Kent, Bristol, Nottingham, Liverpool, Tyneside, Birmingham, and several different areas of London.
Lucy MacKeith was one of the presenters. Her topic, ‘Black Peoples in Devon – 17th to 19th Centuries’ was wide ranging. It included local connections with the trade in enslaved Africans and sugar production, as well as stories of Africans who turned up in the county such as Olaudah Equiano, and Peter Courpon, servant of a French Officer who was a prisoner-of-war. Peter married a local girl in Moretonhampstead in 1807. Ten years later, Lucy published a book about her findings entitled, ‘Local Black History: A Beginning in Devon. (2003)’.[2]You can read the book online at https://www.tellingourstoriesdevon.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2003/01/Local-Black-History-a-beginning-in-Devon.pdf
Two presentations at the conference particularly stuck in my memory. In the first, ‘In Search of Mr. McKenzie,’ Isha McKenzie-Mavinga and Thelma Perkins described their search for information about the life of their father about whom they knew very little. As the sisters had grown up in children’s homes with only white companions and carers, their search also involved a discovery of their Black History and heritage. Attendees were able to buy their resulting book.
In the second, speakers from Butetown History Project, Cardiff, were part of a presentation on ‘Black History as a Community Resource.’ Mrs. Watkins gave a brief but vivid talk about her childhood in Butetown, also known as ‘Tiger Bay.’ She remembered with affection how children of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds went to school together, played together and celebrated each other’s religious festivals. Her talk was complemented by Neil Sinclair reading an extract from his newly published book, ‘The Tiger Bay Story’.
Pip Jones spoke about Africans in Bristol in the 18th century, and her work along with Rita Yousef also resulted in a book, published in 1994. (See below for a full list of all the speakers and the titles of their presentations.)
Several of the papers given at the conference were subsequently published in BASA Newsletters. ‘The Nigerian Progress Union’ by Hakim Adi appeared in Newsletter 9 (April 1994); ‘Black People in Canning Town and Custom House between the Wars’ by Howard Bloch in issue 14 (January 1996); ‘Africanus: a 19 th century freeholder of Nottingham’ by Helen Gray in issue 19 (October 1997); ‘Liverpool’s Black Population During World War II’ by Carlton Wilson in issue 20 (January 1998); ‘The Arabs of Tyneside: a disappearing community’ by Dick Lawless in issue 21 (April 1998); and ‘Black people in Kent since 1600’ by David Killingray in Newsletter 22 (September 1998).
Perhaps the remaining papers from this conference are archived somewhere. It would be great if all the papers could be published together online, along with an article from Newsletter 11 (January 1995) by Linda Hodgson on ‘Black People in pre-Twentieth Century Cumbria’, as arecord of all the fantastic work that had been done around the country by 1993.
Anna Davin, in a long review published in History Workshop Journal, reported that,
[The conference] brought together, some two hundred teachers, students, local historians, activists and a few academics who were of all ages between teens and sixties, and of various origins….Many speakers, from both platform and floor, stressed the need to bring black history into the classroom…
As at all the best conferences, discussions extended into every break and beyond. At the back of the hall on display panels you could study background material related to the talks: rare photographs (of John Archer’s wedding, for instance), programmes and documents from important occasions like the London Pan-African Conference of 1900; maps with pins where traces of the Black Presence had been identified; the mock-up for the Wellingborough life-history pamphlet; Tiger Bay photographs and so on. There were also excellent bookstalls.[3]History Workshop Journal, vol 13, issue 1, Spring 1994, pp.246-250.
There were three bookstalls – provided by Sean Creighton of Agenda Services, George Fisher of Ragga-Muffins, and the wonderful Raddle Bookshop that was based in Berners Street, Leicester.[4]There is a great blog about Raddle Bookshop at https://akinsankofa.wordpress.com/2009/02/26/raddle-books/ Having the bookstalls present enabled participants to take away resources to add to their growing knowledge. My friends and I bought as many books as we could afford.
Marika put together the wonderful variety of presentations covering many areas of the country and brought together enthusiasts from many different fields. She selected a brilliant partner in Nottingham – Len Garrison, whose input helped to make the weekend even more special. At the time Len was director of ACFF (the Association of Caribbean Families and Friends) based at their Education Cultural and Study Centre at 28 Beaconsfield Road, Hyson Green. The Association hosted a dinner for conference participants on the Saturday evening. The food was delicious and the entertainment provided by members of ACFF was memorable. This joyful event was much enjoyed by all who attended (including my young son) and it added greatly to the success of the weekend.
Len Garrison (1943 – 2003)
At the end of the conference on the Sunday, attendees were invited to visit an exhibition, The Black Presence in Nottingham, at Nottingham Castle, which was jointly curated by Len Garrison, ACFF and the Castle Museum. The Black Cultural Archives now situated in Windrush Square, Brixton was Len’s brainchild. I remember the previous iteration of the BCA in the 1980s when it was housed in a building in Coldharbour Lane. The upstairs room had shelves all around the walls stacked with files and files of information, mostly collected by Len. Len well knew the importance of Black History and how badly knowledge of it was needed by young people at the time, so it is unsurprising that when he was based in Nottingham he should have delved into the city’s history, persuaded the Castle Museum to put on this exhibition and even managed to obtain local authority funding for the production of a substantial catalogue to accompany it.
The visit to the exhibition made a perfect ending to the feast of Black History we had enjoyed.
The Black Presence in Nottingham Exhibition Catalogue
This was the first conference organised by BASA. More followed in different parts of the country. A couple of years later, I took out a subscription to the ASACACHIB (later BASA) Newsletter which was published three times a year. The arrival of this little magazine was always eagerly looked forward to, as it contained much important information – long and short articles and book reviews, notifications of forthcoming events and, to me, most exciting of all, little snippets of information from parish records and archives about Black and Asian people located in all parts of the British Isles over the previous 500 years.
The BASA newsletter ran to 63 issues, the last 3 of which are available to download from the BASA website, or read online. The newsletters can be consulted in the library of the Black Cultural Archives and some copies are available for sale in the BCA bookshop.. Details of the contents of all issues are also given on this link: https://www.blackandasianstudies.org/newsletter_newsletter-html
Covers of BASA Newsletters from 1995 to 2010
Marika Sherwood played an extremely important role in the research and dissemination of British Black History. Via conferences and the BASA newsletter, she brought together enthusiasts young and old, academic and non-academic, of all ethnic backgrounds, and gave them platforms where they could exchange ideas on equal terms.
Her own research was hugely important and wide-ranging and it included British Asian as well as Black British History – for example her in-depth research on Lascar seafarers. This dual focus was important because there has always been less public interest and less publicity given to the history of Asians in Britain. Marika was conscious that children of Asian ancestry were as much in need of access to their history as children of African ancestry.
On Marika’s passing we have lost a giant of British Black and Asian History. I hope remembrance of her life will encourage others to try and replicate her enthusiasm and aim to emulate her contribution.
For me, Marika’s memory will always be tied up with ‘the best Black History conference ever’ that took place in Nottingham in 1993.
Anyone familiar with the long running TV quiz ‘Have I Got News For You’ will know that they have a ‘guest publication’ slot which features some extremely obscure magazines and journals, the panellists have to fill in the blanks in incomplete headlines. As far as I know Topmasts – the Quarterly Newsletter of the Society for Nautical Research has never featured but it is certainly a journal I was unaware of – until now.
Their February issue includes an article by our regular contributor, John Ellis. John’s article features John Peters, who had been a Black rating in the Royal Navy and was almost certainly a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar. You can read the article (indeed, the entire issue – John’s article is the third item in it) here:
John Peters died on 30th June 1842 and was buried on 2nd July at St. Michael’s church, Heighington, Co. Durham, yet another instance of Black history buried (literally) in British cemeteries:
I am pleased to introduce two new articles on the Historycal Roots website that illustrate the diversity of Black British history in microcosm.
First, John Ellis introduces us to ‘Black Troop’, the 11th (Prince Albert’s Own) Hussars 1815-1838. Although the ‘Black’ refers to the colour of their horses, John has identified three Black soldiers within their ranks:
Second, leaping forward to the 20th century, Audrey Dewjee continues to shine a light on the presence of Black women in the ranks of the ATS during World War 2, naming 157 women who served their country in this way:
Members of the first group of volunteers at their training centre, including Ena Collymore back row centre and Norma Marsh, back row right. Image courtesy National Army Museum, London
Over a century apart, these are two more examples of a presence that dates back at least to Roman times.
