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Ignatius Sancho
Portrait of Sancho, c. 1768, by Thomas Gainsborough
Born
Charles Ignatius Sancho

c. 1729
Atlantic Ocean
Died14 December 1780(1780-12-14) (aged 50–51)
London, England
Occupation(s)Composer, writer, shopkeeper
Known forSecond person of African descent to vote in a British general election; influence on abolitionism
SpouseAnne Osborne[1]
ChildrenFrances Joanna (1761–1815), Ann Alice (1763–1805), Elizabeth Bruce (1766–1837), Jonathan William (1768–1770), Lydia (1771–1776), Katherine Margaret (1773–1779), William Leach Osborne (1775–1810)[2][3]
Signature

Charles Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729 – 14 December 1780) was a British abolitionist, writer and composer. Born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, Sancho was sold into slavery in the Spanish colony of New Granada. After his parents died, Sancho's owner took the two-year-old orphan to Britain and gifted him to three sisters living in Greenwich, where he remained for eighteen years. Unable to bear being a servant to them, Sancho ran away to the Montagu House in Blackheath, London where John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu taught him how to read and encouraged Sancho's budding interest in literature. After spending some time as a butler in the household, Sancho left and started his own business as a shopkeeper, while also starting to write and publish various essays, plays and books.

Sancho quickly became involved in the nascent British abolitionist movement, which sought to outlaw both the slave trade and the institution of slavery itself, and he became one of its most devoted supporters. Sancho's status as a property-owner meant he was legally qualified to vote in a general election, a right he exercised in 1774 and 1780, becoming the second known British African to have voted in Britain after John London.[4] Gaining fame in Britain as "the extraordinary Negro", Sancho became, to British abolitionists, a symbol of the humanity of Africans and the immorality of the slave trade and slavery. Sancho died in 1780. The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited and published two years after his death, are the first published letter collection by a writer of African descent.[5]

Early life

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Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in what was known as the Middle Passage. His mother died not long after arriving in the Spanish colony of New Granada, which formed parts of modern-day Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela.[6][7][8] He was baptised and named by the Catholic bishop of the colony.[9] His father reportedly took his own life rather than live as a slave.[9]

Sancho's owner took him, then barely two years old, to England and gave him to three unmarried sisters living together in Greenwich, where he lived from 1731 to 1749. The sisters gave him the surname Sancho as they believed he resembled Don Quixote's squire.[9] The Duke of Montagu, a frequent visitor to the sisters, was impressed by Sancho's intellect, frankness, and amiability. He encouraged Sancho to read and lent him books from his personal library at Blackheath.[6][7][8]

Life in Britain

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Sancho's informal education made his lack of freedom at Greenwich unbearable, and he ran away to Montagu House, Blackheath in 1749. For two years until her death in 1751, Sancho worked as a butler for the Duchess of Montagu at her residence, where he immersed himself in music, poetry, reading, and writing.[7][8] Upon her death in 1751, Sancho received an annuity of £30 (equivalent to £6,000 in 2023) and a year's salary.[7] On 17 December 1758[9] he married a West Indian woman, Anne Osborne, becoming a devoted husband and father. They had seven children: Frances Joanna, Ann Alice, Elizabeth Bruce, Jonathan William, Lydia, Katherine Margaret, and William Leach Osborne.[2] Around the time of the birth of their third child, Sancho became a valet to George Montagu, the son-in-law of his previous patron.[7] Sancho remained a valet until 1773.[7]

Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit, probably a portrait of Sancho by Allan Ramsay[a]

In 1768, the British artist Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait of Sancho at the same time as the Duchess of Montagu sat for her portrait by him.[1][b] By the late 1760s, Sancho had become well accomplished and was considered by many to be a man of refinement.[7] In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Sancho wrote to Anglo-Irish novelist Laurence Sterne,[12] encouraging the famous writer to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade: "That subject, handled in your striking manner, would ease the yoke (perhaps) of many – but if only of one – Gracious God! – what a feast to a benevolent heart!"[13]

The Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit (oil on canvas 61.8 x 51.5 cm, c. 1757–59; in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, Devon) is probably of Sancho, although it was previously thought to be of Olaudah Equiano. It is now attributed to Allan Ramsay (1713–1784).[14][15] A full account of the attribution to Ramsay and identification of Sancho is contained in the article "The Lost African" published in Apollo magazine, August 2006.

Sterne received Sancho's letter in July 1766 shortly after he had finished writing a conversation between his fictional characters Corporal Trim and his brother Tom in Tristram Shandy, wherein Tom described the mistreatment of an African servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon he had visited.[16] Sterne's widely publicised 27 July 1766 response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.

There is a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events (as well as in the great ones) of this world: for I had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of a friendless poor negro-girl, and my eyes had scarce done smarting with it, when your letter of recommendation in behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters, came to me – but why her brethren? – or your’s, Sancho! any more than mine? It is by the finest tints, and most insensible gradations, that nature descends from the fairest face about St. James’s, to the sootiest complexion in Africa: at which tint of these, is it, that the ties of blood are to cease? and how many shades must we descend lower still in the scale, ’ere mercy is to vanish with them? – but ’tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one half of the world to use the other half of it like brutes, & then endeavour to make ’em so."[16]

Following the publication of the Sancho-Sterne letters, Sancho became widely known as a man of letters.[1] Sancho, a British subject and voter in Westminster, noted that despite being in the country since the age of two he felt he was "only a lodger, and hardly that". In other writings he described his life: "Went by water – had a coach home – were gazed at – followed, etc. etc. – but not much abused" (that time).[5] On another occasion, he writes: "They stopped us in the town and most generously insulted us."[17][18]

Shopkeeper

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In 1774, with help from Montagu, Sancho, suffering from ill health with gout, opened a grocery shop, offering merchandise such as tobacco, sugar and tea, at 19 Charles Street in London's Mayfair, Westminster.[19][c] These were goods then mostly produced by slaves in the West Indies.[6]

Ignatius Sancho is the first known person of African descent to vote in a British general election. As an independent male [sic][d] property owner, with a house and grocery shop on Charles Street, he had the right to place his vote for the Westminster Members of Parliament in the 1774 and 1780 elections.

Record of Ignatius Sancho's vote in the general election, October 1774, British Library.[20]

As a shopkeeper Sancho enjoyed more time to socialise, correspond with his many friends, share his enjoyment of literature, and his shop had many visitors. He wrote and published a Theory of Music, though no copy is extant.[21] There are 62 known compositions by Sancho, which were printed in four collections in London between c. 1767 and 1779: Minuets Cotillons & Country Dances, book I (c. 1767), containing 24 dances; A Collection of New Songs (c. 1769), six songs on words of William Shakespeare, David Garrick, Anacreon, and unidentified authors; Minuets, &c., &c., book II (c. 1770), with 20 dances; and Twelve Country Dances for the Year 1779.[21][22] In addition, he wrote two plays. At this time he also wrote letters and articles for newspapers, under his own name and under the pseudonym "Africanus".

Among his acquaintances were figures such as Thomas Gainsborough, the Shakespearean actor David Garrick, violin virtuoso Felice Giardini, the preacher William Dodd,[7] the sculptor Joseph Nollekens, and the novelist Laurence Sterne. Nollekens gave Sancho a plaster cast of his 1766 marble bust of Sterne. Sancho received many prominent visitors at his shop, including statesman and abolitionist Charles James Fox, who successfully steered a resolution through Parliament pledging it to abolish the slave trade. Fox oversaw a Foreign Slave Trade Bill in spring 1806 that prohibited British subjects from participating in the trading of slaves with the colonies of Britain's wartime enemies, thus eliminating two-thirds of the slave trade passing through British ports.[23][e]

As a property owner, regardless of his ethnicity, he had the right to vote for Members of Parliament. He voted for the Westminster constituency in the 1774 general election and the 1780 general election. Voting was not secret at the time, and it was recorded that he voted for Hugh Percy and Thomas Pelham-Clinton in 1774, and for George Brydges Rodney and Charles James Fox in 1780.[20] He is the second person of African origin known to have voted in Britain after victualler John London.[24][20][25]

Death

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Ignatius Sancho died from the effects of gout on 14 December 1780 and was buried on 17 December in the burial area of St Margaret's, Westminster (now the site of Christchurch Gardens, Victoria Street, London). There is no memorial marker at the church, as the grave stones (which lie flat) in the churchyard were covered over with grass in 1880 and no inscription was found for him when a record was made of the existing epitaphs.[26] He was the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press.[26]

Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho

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While his correspondence often included domestic issues, it also commented on the political and literary life in 18th-century Britain.[3][13] One of his more famous series of letters includes his eye-witness accounts of the Gordon Riots in June 1780. The angry mob passed outside his shop on Charles Street. Beginning as a Protestant protest against parliamentary extension of Catholic enfranchisement, it grew into a violent mob of 100,000 looting and burning parts of London.[27] He wrote:

There is at this present moment at least a hundred thousand poor, miserable, ragged rabble, from 12 to 60 years of age, with blue cockades in their hats – besides half as many women and children, all parading the streets, the bridge, the park, ready for any and every mischief. Gracious God! What's the matter now? I was obliged to leave off – the shouts of the mob, the horrid clashing of swords, and the clutter of a multitude in swiftest motion drew me to the door, when everyone in the street was employed in shutting up shop. It is now just five o'clock – the ballad-singers are exhasting their musical talents with the downfall of Popery, S-h and N-h, Lord S-h narrowly escaped with his life about an hour since' the mob seized his chariot going to the house, broke his glasses and, in struggling to get his lordship out, they somehow have cut his face.

In 1782 Frances Crewe, a correspondent of Sancho's, arranged for 160 of his letters to be published in the form of two volumes entitled The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, with more than 2,000 subscribing to it. His widow received in royalties more than £500, equivalent to £79,034 in 2023.[28] Joseph Jekyll provided a memoir of Sancho for the first edition, and four more editions were issued by 1803.[29]

Sancho's son, William Leach Osborne Sancho, inherited the shop on Charles Street and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business. In 1803 at this shop he printed a fifth edition of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho with Memoirs of His Life by Joseph Jekyll,[19] with a frontispiece engraving by Bartolozzi.[30]

In a letter Sancho sent on 1 April 1779 to William Stevenson he wrote: "I am Sir an Affrican – with two ffs – if you please – & proud am I to be of a country that knows no politicians – nor lawyers – [...] –nor thieves of any denomination save Natural...."[31][32]

Sancho was unusually blunt in his response to a letter from Jack Wingrave, John Wingrave's son. Jack wrote about his negative reaction to people of colour based on his own experience in India during the 1770s. Sancho's response was:[33]

I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country (which as a resident I love – and for its freedom – and for the many blessings I enjoy in it – shall ever have my warmest wishes, prayers and blessings); I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East – West-Indies – and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators – indeed of all Christian navigators – is money – money – money – for which I do not pretend to blame them – Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part – to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love – society – and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace – with the commodities of his respective land – Commerce attended with strict honesty – and with Religion for its companion – would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil – are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness – and powder – and bad fire-arms – to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping.[33][34]

Legacy

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Plaque in Greenwich Park, London
Plaque in King Charles Street, City of Westminster, London marking the location of Sancho's grocery store
Memorial stone in St Margaret's church, Westminster

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ The identity of the painter and of his subject are subject to debate.[10][11]
  2. ^ According to scholar Reyahn King, there is an inscription by antiquarian William Stevenson on the back of the canvas stating that Gainsborough completed the portrait in one hour and forty minutes on 29 November 1768. King praises the portrait for avoiding contemporary stereotypes of Africans and portraying Sancho as a very dignified and refined gentleman. He further argues that the Sancho portrait is the most accomplished portrait of an African person in British portraiture of the time. Bartolozzi's 1781 engraving based on Gainsborough's portrait of Sancho was used as the frontispiece when Sancho's Letters were published.
  3. ^ This is now a heritage site included in tours of Westminster. The site now houses main building of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and the facade of the building includes reliefs depicting the liberation of Africa from slavery and a portrait of William Wilberforce.
  4. ^ Prior to the Reform Act 1832 women who met the property-holding requirement could in fact vote, so Sancho being male was irrelevant.
  5. ^ Charles James Fox was Britain's first foreign secretary (1782, 1783, 1806).

References

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  1. ^ a b c King, Reyahn (1997). Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 17. ISBN 978-1855141926.
  2. ^ a b Carey, Brycchan. "Ignatius Sancho's Friends and Family". Retrieved 8 January 2013.
  3. ^ a b Edwards, Paul Geoffrey; Polly Rewt, eds. (1994). The Letters of Ignatius Sancho. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
  4. ^ Osuh, Chris (24 October 2024). "Britain's first black voter was in 1749, 25 years earlier than thought, and ran a pub". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 October 2024. Until now, the first black voter in Britain was thought to be the composer Charles Ignatius Sancho, the British abolitionist who, as the owner of property in Mayfair, voted in the 1774 Westminster election. But a chance discovery at the British Library by Dr Gillian Williamson, a historian researching lodgers in Georgian London, reveals a black man voted in an election 25 years earlier. The revelation that John London, landlord of a pub in the capital, cast a vote in 1749, sheds new light on an era when the black population of London is believed to have been 10,000 strong, and the democratic process was limited but lively.
  5. ^ a b "First edition of the Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African, 1782". British Library. Archived from the original on 28 September 2022. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
  6. ^ a b c Carey, Brycchan. "Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters". Brycchan Carey. Retrieved 2 March 2013.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h Ellis, Markman (1996). The Politics of Sensibility: Race, Gender and Commerce in the Sentimental Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 57.
  8. ^ a b c Walvin, James (1997). "Ignatius Sancho: The Man and His Times". In King, Reyahn (ed.). Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters. London, UK: National Portrait Gallery. p. 96.
  9. ^ a b c d Carretta, Vincent. "Sancho, (Charles) Ignatius". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24609. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  10. ^ Madin, John (8 July 2008). "Trading faces". BBC. Retrieved 4 February 2024.
  11. ^ Parsons, Julien (June 2023). "Portrait of a Man in a Red Suit". RAMM research blog.
  12. ^ Carey, Brycchan (March 2003). "'The extraordinary Negro': Ignatius Sancho, Joseph Jekyll, and the Problem of Biography" (PDF). Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. 26 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1111/j.1754-0208.2003.tb00257.x. Retrieved 8 January 2013.
  13. ^ a b Phillips, Caryl (December 1996). "Director's Foreword". Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 12.
  14. ^ Madin, John, "Trading faces", BBC – Devon – Abolition, 26 February 2007.
  15. ^ "Portrait of an African (probably Ignatius Sancho, 1729–1780)" Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine, Art UK.
  16. ^ a b "Ignatius Sancho and Laurence Sterne" (PDF). A Web Companion to The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Norton.
  17. ^ Sancho, Ignatius; Joseph Jekyll (1803). Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African: To which are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life.
  18. ^ Walvin, James (1986). England, Slaves and Freedom, 1776–1838. Springer. p. 83. ISBN 978-1349081912 – via Google Books.
  19. ^ a b c City Council of Westminster. "Foreign & Commonwealth Office and King Charles Street and Ignatius Sancho". Audio Guide to the Road to Abolition Trail. Archived from the original on 28 December 2013. Retrieved 10 January 2013.
  20. ^ a b c "Record of Ignatius Sancho's vote in the general election, October 1774". British Library. Archived from the original on 30 September 2020. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
  21. ^ a b Wright, Josephine (1981). Ignatius Sancho (1729-1780): An Early African Composer in England. The Collected Editions of His Music in Facsimile. New York and London: Garland Publishing. p. xviii.
  22. ^ "Sancho, Ignatius (1729-1780)". Retrieved 18 April 2024.
  23. ^ Powell, Jim (September 1996). "Charles James Fox, Valiant Voice for Liberty". The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty. 46 (9).
  24. ^ "Who was Ignatius Sancho? Google Doodle commemorates life of British abolitionist". The Independent. Retrieved 2 October 2020.
  25. ^ Dr Gillian Williamson (21 October 2024). "John London: Britain's First Black Voter?". historyofparliament.com. The History of Parliament. Retrieved 24 October 2024.
  26. ^ a b "Ignatius Sancho". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
  27. ^ Paul Edwards (1981). "Black People in Britain: Olaudah Equiano and Igantius Sancho". History Today. 31 (9).
  28. ^ "Inflation calculator". www.bankofengland.co.uk.
  29. ^ Carey, Brycchan. "Joseph Jekyll – Ignatius Sancho's Biographer".
  30. ^ Sancho, Ignatius; Joseph Jekyll (1803). Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African: To which are Prefixed, Memoirs of His Life.
  31. ^ Ignatius Sancho (2015). Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1460405291 – via Google Books.
  32. ^ "The British Library MS Viewer". www.bl.uk. Retrieved 2 April 2023.[permanent dead link‍]
  33. ^ a b Carey, Brycchan. "Sancho's Views on Empire and Slavery".
  34. ^ Ignatius Sancho (1778). Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho.
  35. ^ "New Plaques for Black Icons: Sancho, Aldridge and Prince". Culture 24. Retrieved 20 October 2020.
  36. ^ "Ignatius Sancho Café opens in Greenwich Park". Royal Parks. 13 March 2024. Retrieved 3 April 2024.
  37. ^ "Stamp honour for slave trade abolitionist". BBC. Retrieved 2 October 2022.
  38. ^ "Ignatius Sancho". 100 Great Black Britons. 6 July 2015. Archived from the original on 6 July 2015.
  39. ^ Hemley, Matthew. "Paterson Joseph one-man show to play UK ahead of US tour", The Stage., 15 July 2015.
  40. ^ Sulcas, Roslyn (11 December 2015). "Paterson Joseph Brings Charles Ignatius Sancho to Life". New York Times.
  41. ^ "Leon Levy BAM Digital Archive: Production: Sancho: An Act of Remembrance [2015f.01270]". levyarchive.bam.org.
  42. ^ "Sancho: An Act of Remembrance". www.wiltons.org.uk.
  43. ^ "Google Doodle honours author and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho". The Independent. 1 October 2020.
  44. ^ Khomami, Nadia (7 June 2023). "Novel about 18th-century black Briton Charles Ignatius Sancho wins RSL prize". The Guardian. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  45. ^ Harambat, Jean (2023). La Pièce Manquante. France: Dargaud. p. 160. ISBN 978-2205202359.
  46. ^ "Ignatius Sancho". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 3 January 2024.
  47. ^ Howcutt-Kelly, Clare (2 January 2024). "Sculptor creates memorial to honour black abolitionist Charles Ignatius Sancho". www.stonespecialist.com. Retrieved 3 January 2024.

Further reading

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  • Friends of Greenwich Park newsletter. Summer 2007.
  • Joseph, Paterson. Sancho: An Act of Remembrance. London: Oberon Books, 2011. Print.
  • "Ignatius Sancho: The Composer – Black History Month 2018". Black History Month 2018. 14 February 2008.
  • Ignatius Sancho, Twelve English Country Dances written by an erstwhile slave (1779), Facs. Set for the harpsichord. (London: Thompson, 2014). Interpreted by V. Webster, illus. D. Durant, research S Petchy and P Cooper. Pbk 97 pp.
  • Ignatius Sancho, Dances for a Princess, humbly dedicated (with permission) to the Princess Royal by Her Royal Highnesses Most Obedient Servant Ignatius Sancho, 191 pp; ed. & intro. by S. Petchey (64 pp). 22 dances & facs. of their music and two more pieces. A recording of these dances is available from Green Ginger at https://greengingerband.co.uk. ISBN 978-1-5272-3701-8.
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