Regular contributors Audrey Dewjee and John Ellis have been busy.
John continues his assiduous search of digitised newspaper archives for snippets of Black British history. Much of what he finds is fragmentary but each fragment adds another piece to the jigsaw. His task is a never-ending one as, of course, the digitisation process continues apace with thousands of new newspaper pages added to the archives at findmypast.co.uk every month. His latest snippets are here. As you will discover, they range widely geographically and across time:
John has other discoveries in the pipeline, sometimes I can barely keep up!
Audrey, meanwhile, has brought her long-term research into the life of Joseph Almaze to a conclusion, for now. Historical research can rarely be said to be ‘finished’, new material is constantly emerging (see above) and sometimes a ‘conclusion’ turns out to have been merely a ‘provisional draft’ of history. If you have never heard of Joseph Almaze (I hadn’t) I venture to suggest that you and I should have done. His was one of many Black voices raised in Britain against slavery and was one of those who signed a letter to Granville Sharpe on 15th December 1787, thanking him for all that he had done to help the cause of abolition. Audrey’s fascinating article about this 18th-century Black Londoner is here:
John Ellis shares a cutting from the South London Press, dated 19th September 1913 (NB: the article contains an extremely offensive racist term):
COLOUR PREJUDICE
The Board proceeded to the appointment of a medical officer for the Christchurch district at a salary of £120 per ann., with extra fees for midwifery.
The Dispensaries Visiting Committee only submitted one name to the Board – that of Dr. Horace J Gater, of Lyndhurst Road, Peckham; and recommended that the gentleman should be appointed. It was understood that there was only one other candidate for the position.
Councillor Roe thought it singular seeing that the post was extensively advertised, that there were only two applicants for the position. He considered that the Board should have interviewed both candidates.
Mr Brown explained that it was not deemed advisable to bring the second candidate before the Board.
Mr Roe: You haven’t brought the second man here because of his colour. I don’t care what the colour of his skin is. I believe in looking upon all men as brothers.
Dr Capes said the officer would have to attend poor people, who were much more fastidious than well-to-do people. They would probably decline to be attended by what was known as a man of colour. Some years ago a well-qualified nurse came from Jamaica to earn her livelihood in Camberwell, but people objected to her colour and she was starved, owing to their boycott. In plain English the second candidate was a nigger, and men of colour were not suitable for a position of this kind.
Replying to Mr Roe, Dr Capes said the qualifications of the coloured gentlemen were exceedingly good. One objection to him was that he declined to give up an appointment he held at Marylebone.
Dr Gater was then unanimously appointed to the position.[1]The South London Press, 19th September 1913, Findmypast
The fact that Sarah Woodbine was not Jamaican and never claimed to be, is neither here nor there, the British press has been known to be very imprecise about where a Black person came from. ‘Jamaica’ has often been used as a general catch-all label covering a multitude of foreign parts. Sarah was actually born in Buenos Aires of Jamaican heritage.
Sarah Woodbine could certainly be described as ‘well-qualified’ as she had finished top of the class in the nursing exams she took whilst working as a probationer nurse at Croydon from 1894 to 1897.
Geographically, Camberwell is not that far from Sarah Woodbine’s known stamping ground. She worked in Croydon from 1894 until she moved to work at Hither Green in 1897. Her time at Hither Green was brief because the hospital there only officially opened on 12th July 1897 and in November 1898 she found employment at Eastville, Bristol.
Hither Green is barely five miles from Camberwell, sufficiently close for any story concerning her to be known to the men considering the vacancy at Christchurch (most probably Streatham, itself less than four miles from Camberwell). So, the geography is plausible. The timing fits too if we accept that the distance from 1913 to 1897 counts as ‘some years ago.’
There is no evidence (yet) concerning the circumstance of Sarah Woodbine’s departure from Hither Green, so the suggestion that she was the subject of a boycott by patients can only be speculative.
If the ‘Jamaican nurse’ referred to was not Sarah Woodbine, then it raises the intriguing question of who was she? But, having initially been sceptical, we are now leaning towards the view that the report does indeed refer to Sarah and is indicative of the sort of extreme prejudice she may have encountered.
We don’t write about Samuel Coleridge-Taylor as often as we should, he featured in one of our first posts (in 2016) and a few since, but he was one of our main inspirations when we started Historycal Roots and we welcome any excuse to write about him again. Although he has never been ‘hidden history’ (he was hugely famous in the 1890s and early years of the 20th century), he undeniably fell out of fashion for several decades before making a comeback in recent years. Now, as we approach the 150th anniversary of his birth on 15th August 1875, it would be remiss of us not to take the opportunity to celebrate his life.
The Three Choirs Festival (the choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford) gave him a big break when, at the age of twenty-three, he was invited to write an orchestral work for the 1898 festival, hosted that year by Gloucester. It was, the already famous, Edward Elgar who put his name forward to the festival organisers, describing him as ‘by far and away the cleverest fellow amongst the younger men.’ The piece Coleridge-Taylor wrote for that year’s festival, ‘Ballade in A Minor’, was a great success and is still performed today. A review in The Morning Post commented that although the composer was ‘hitherto little, if at all, known in Gloucester … the Music Committee was fully justified in asking him to contribute to this year’s Festival scheme.’ We might raise an eyebrow today at the description of the music as ‘half untamed’ and ‘half barbaric’ but the review goes on to say that ‘few composers have been greeted in so cordial a manner at a first appearance or received such an ovation as followed the conclusion of the Ballad.’[1]The MorningPost, 15<sup>th</sup> September 1898
For anyone unfamiliar with it, you can hear it here (NB: I tried but failed to find a version without intrusive adverts, you can skip them after a few seconds, but it is, nonetheless, annoying. It’s the price you have to pay to watch brilliant music for free on You Tube):
His offerings for subsequent festivals, ‘ASolemn Prelude‘ (1899); ‘The Soul’s Expression’ (1900); and ‘Idyll’ (1901), were less successful and have rarely been heard since. So far our searches have found no reviews of these concerts although we did find this programme for the 1899 concert.
This underwhelming run did not prevent an invitation to write a piece for the 1903 festival hosted by Hereford. It was a revival of that work, The Atonement, that drew us to Hereford cathedral on 31st July 2025.
As we settled into our seats in the glorious nave of the cathedral we weren’t sure what to expect, the piece had not been performed since its premiere in 1903 – perhaps there was a reason for this?
We are not musicologists or music reviewers, we go to concerts to listen to the music and, hopefully, enjoy it. Coleridge Taylor’s ‘The Atonement’ kept us fully engaged throughout its 85 minutes, it was long but it didn’t feel long. The choir and soloists were excellent as was the Philharmonia Orchestra under the baton of Samuel Hudson. We enjoyed it a lot and were glad we took the trouble to attend.
As we left, we chatted to one of the ushers who commented that the libretto (the words) was ‘all over the place’ and this is a comment that is reflected in an excellent piece written by John Quinn about the work in general and this performance in particular. Quinn’s article is honest about what he sees as the weaknesses of the composition as well as praising its strengths:
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor died in 1912 and Quinn concedes that ‘had he lived longer, Coleridge-Taylor might have revised the work or, more likely, have produced much better choral/orchestral compositions.’ In fact, his best known work, ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’, was first performed on 11th November 1898 just two months after the Ballade in A Minor received its premier in Gloucester and almost five years before ‘The Atonement’ premiered. It is tantalising to think what he might have achieved had he lived longer.
We can only repeat that, whatever its weaknesses, we enjoyed ‘The Atonement’.
One disappointment was that among an audience of around seven hundred we counted just three people of colour, classical music apparently remains a closed book for a great many people.
There was a photo in the programme that accompanied the concert showing Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (in the front, just to the left of the conductor) at the 1903 premier. It is a poor quality image but we include it for its historic interest:
The premier took place at the Shire Hall, a short walk from the cathedral. It is a splendid building and, although the decor is very much less elaborate than it was in 1903, it is recognisably the space where the above picture was taken:
During our visit to Hereford we visited the Town Hall mistaking it for the Shire Hall (the Shire Hall would not have been accessible to us anyway). It also has a very grand interior space:
Opened in 1905, it seems curious that Hereford should have two such similar spaces but this probably gives a good indication of the vibrancy of cultural life in the city at the turn of the century.
As this is a significant anniversary we hope that there will be other opportunities to celebrate this Black British composer. There has already been a CD released containing a number of his less well known works including Toussaint L’Ouverture (described as ‘a swashbuckling portrait in sound’ by the reviewer in Gramophone magazine)[3]The CD is on the Avie label, AV2763 and, as is the modern way, can be listened to on Spotify if you have access to that service. It was reviewed in Gramophone‘s September 2025 issue.. Two pieces were also featured in the Great British Classics BBC Promenade concert on 5th August (Isle of Beauty and The Evening Star)[4]https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gdll (only available in the UK) and, on 5th September, we will be at the Royal Albert Hall to hear Sir Simon Rattle conduct another piece, ‘The Bamboula’. All BBC Prom concerts are available to listen to in full for, I believe, at least a month after they are broadcast. Do check out this glorious music and, unlike You Tube or Spotify, it costs nothing to listen!
The CD is on the Avie label, AV2763 and, as is the modern way, can be listened to on Spotify if you have access to that service. It was reviewed in Gramophone‘s September 2025 issue.
Sometimes the Black presence in British history seems to be invisible but … can you see a Black presence in this painting which depicts an actual historical event that took place in Dublin in 1821 (very much part of the United Kingdom at the time)?
You probably can’t. But here is a detail from the same painting.
The eagle eyes of John Ellis spotted the drummer about half way up the picture at the left hand side. Not only did he spot him, John’s research enables us to know the name of this painted smudge!
If you have ever had the task of sorting through old family photos, you will know the frustration of not being able to put names to faces. Perhaps you recognise your mother as a young woman, or some other relative, but who are those other people in the picture?
I have just been shown a photo of a woman seated with a young child on either side of her and a rather splendid teddy bear at her feet. Fortunately my wife is able to tell me that this is her grandmother with her two children. I have met all three, perhaps sixty or seventy years or so after the picture was taken, but without my wife’s prompting I could not have put names to their faces. Having your picture taken in a studio would have been a big deal and it shows in the slightly stilted poses, except perhaps the child I know as ‘Aunty Claudette’ who looks as though she might burst out of the shot were it not for her mother’s gently restraining grip.
Usually, putting names to faces is harder to do. But sometimes diligent research combined with a slice of good fortune can fill in the gaps. The photo below is of a group of ATS recruits who came to England for training in October 1943.
The photo, which comes from the National Army Museum’s collection, has been used many times but never with their names attached.
Until now!
This link will take you to an updated version of Audrey Dewjee’s article about the ATS women who came from the Caribbean to serve. The names of these nine ladies have now been included:
We aren’t always so lucky. In October 2024 we published this photo of a young woman taken in Powys, North Wales, probably in the 1890s, and asked for help identifying her. So far her identity remains a mystery.
I mentioned that luck is often a factor, that’s what we need in this case. If anyone has any clues please get in touch.
On 19th May I gazed out of a train window and wondered why I was making the journey. I was heading towards the market town of Hawes, deep in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. I mused that in the time it was taking to get to Hawes from south London, well over four hours, I could have reached the capital city of virtually any European country (Nicosia, Cyprus would have taken longer but that’s about it I think).
I had never visited the Dales before but when I heard that Audrey Dewjee was delivering a talk on the hidden Black and Asian history of the area it had seemed like a good opportunity to rectify the omission. But I was having second thoughts as I watched the countryside roll past. The view was nice, the sheep looked contented as they grazed their way towards someone’s Sunday dinner table, but could there really be much Black and Asian history hidden here?
When I first started taking an interest in this history, I had the pre-conceived notion that it could be found in London, Liverpool, Bristol and Cardiff, obviously, and perhaps some other urban centres too, but with the help of expert guides (like Audrey and John Ellis) my understanding has blossomed. Historycal Roots describes itself as an educational site, well, it has certainly educated me!
Is there Black and Asian history hidden in the Yorkshire Dales? Undoubtedly, and Audrey’s talk did not disappoint. It demonstrated clearly that there is Black history everywhere if you open your eyes and take the trouble to look for it. She has kindly shared her talk with us and you can read it here:
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:
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’.
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:
There are a number of historians who make it their business to improve our understanding of British history by documenting the contribution of Black and mixed heritage men and women. We are honoured to have two of them, Audrey Dewjee and John Ellis, as regular contributors to this site.
Today it is the turn of John Ellis, who has given us a short article about Thomas Crawford, a man who served his country with distinction during the Napoleonic Wars. Born in Africa (Guinea) in about 1772, Thomas was buried at St. Cuthbert’s church, Darlington on 27th February 1836.
Sean Creighton was another of the dedicated band of historians who sought to re-balance British history. Sadly, Sean died earlier this year but he was someone who enhanced our knowledge in many ways and John Ellis particularly asked me to mention him in the context of this latest article. Sean attended Durham university, he continued to take a keen interest in the history of the area up to his death and Thomas Crawford was someone he knew of and wrote about. We acknowledge Sean’s own contribution and are glad that we had the privilege of knowing him.
During our visit to Hereford we visited the Town Hall mistaking it for the Shire Hall (the Shire Hall would not have been accessible to us anyway). It also has a very grand interior space:
