CHAPTER 2

EARLY BLACK SETTLEMENT IN BRITAIN

THEORIES OF RACIAL SUPERIORITY

The profit, firstly, from slave labour in Britain’s New World Possessions and, secondly, from the East Indian Trade was phenomenal and was the motor that drove Britain’s Industrial Revolution. To justify racial domination and slavery/exploitation, theories of racial superiority/inferiority were invented and were based on three broad concepts: sociobiological (genetic), philosophical (cultural) and medical (‘negro diseases’).

Predominant amongst the theories of the inferiority of the African were those of Edward Long, a one-time planter and judge in Jamaica and, latterly, a prominent member of the pro-slavery, anti-African lobby in Britain. In the second volume of his three volume “History of Jamaica”, (1774), Long wrote that he believed there were potent reasons for thinking that the white and the black were two distinct species. Instead of hair, black people, he said, had a covering of wool (the bestial fleece) on their bodies which were infected with black lice, and emitted a lingering bestial or foetid smell. He continued that blacks had no plan or system of morality and were barbarous to their children. Black men had “no tastes, but for women and eating and drinking to excess”. He agreed, he said, with other authors that “blacks were the vilest of the human kind. The orang-utan resembled blacks more than the blacks resembled whites”. There was a continuous chain of intellectual gradation (which sociobiologists of the day referred to as the “Chain of Being”) from monkeys, through varieties of blacks, to the pure white.

Blacks, continued Long, had “brutish” table manners, eating flesh almost raw by choice, even though it was “intolerably putrid and full of maggots”. They tore the meat with their “talons”. In sexual behaviour (a favourite theme of Long) “they are libidinous and shameless as monkies, or baboons”, and “the equally hot temperament of their women has given probability to the charge of their admitting these animals to their embrace”. Africa was “the parent of everything that is monstrous in nature”.

The “Chain of Being” theory permitted the different human races to be allotted places in a hierarchy with whites at the top and the blacks, being outwardly most different from them, at the bottom. Those who propounded the theory of the “Chain of Being” thought of it in terms of its permanence. It was a rigid, static hierarchy and not a stage in a process of constant change. (In this they differed from the social Darwinists of a later century). Union between two species would result in deficient offspring, as was illustrated by the example of the union between horse and ass - the infertile mule.

Long also criticised Lord Mansfield’s decision to free the slave, Somerset. Fearing miscegenation, he wrote that some restraint should be laid on the “unnatural” increase of blacks imported into Britain. He wrote: “The lower class of women in England are remarkably fond of the blacks for reasons too brutal to mention; they would connect themselves with horses and asses, if the laws permitted them. By these ladies they (the blacks) generally have numerous brood. Thus in the course of a few generations more, the English blood will become so contaminated with this mixture......... This is a venomous and dangerous ulcer that threatens to disperse its malignancy far and wide, until every family catches infection from it” (12). Long could not but have been aware that the Duchess of Queensberry, the Countess of Bristol and the Duchess of Kingston, and other high-born ladies were also attracted to members of the black race.

In any case, miscegenation was probably much more the result of the activity of white men, at least if it is looked at globally, and the folk of mixed race were often treated not much better than the natives by the white ruling establishment. In South America, for example, they were subject to numerous restrictions which led to revolutions against Iberian rule. In Eastern Asia, the offspring of mixed unions were abandoned by their white fathers who returned to Europe. In the West Indies, youngsters of mixed race were often sold by their own fathers into slavery. Finally, in South Africa, the inhabitants of mixed race were subject to the same draconian laws of strict racial segregation.

Although probably recognized as the most prominent of the eighteenth century theorists, Long was influenced by the writings of others who preceded him in this field. As early as 1677, Sir William Petty, a founder of the Royal Society, wrote an essay entitled “The Scale of Creatures” which suggested that Europeans and Africans differed from each other in physical and intellectual characteristics.

John Locke, the liberal English philosopher, who also had a financial interest in the slave trade, argued in his “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” in 1690 that, although Africans might be human, they may yet only have a level of reason comparable to that of animals. He helped to start the debate, that was to continue for the next few centuries, on whether the black man was mentally and intellectually equal to the white. Fifty years later, the Scottish philosopher, David Hume, in his essay “Of National Characters” (1753) wrote: “I am apt to suspect the Negroes and, in general, all the other species of men (for they are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual, eminent either in action or speculation........... In Jamaica indeed they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning, but ’tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly”.

Another writer who influenced Long was Samuel Estwick, the agent for Barbados and paymaster-general, who also sat in the House of Commons. In his “Considerations on the Negroe Cause” (1772), he attacked Lord Chief Justice Mansfield’s decision in the Somerset case, and urged a law to keep out black people in order to preserve the British race from stain and contamination, adding that blacks were different from other men “not in kind, but in species” (13).

By the latter half of the eighteenth century, racism, strengthened by the sayings and writings of the learned and the powerful, had proven itself as a powerful force in legitimating not only slavery itself, both at home and abroad, but also the inevitable abuses associated with the practice and institutionalisation of slavery. It was natural, therefore, that racism should then be perfected as a science to explain away the further abuses inherent in the new forms of racial domination and exploitation that were to emerge in the forms of colonialism and imperialism, and in the settling of “excess” British home populations abroad in countries with compatible climates but themselves already populated with indigenous nations intent on defending their corner.

A great many learned and well known individuals in Europe and North America contributed to this pseudo-scientific racism. Amongst them were several doctors. It was the Swedish botanist, Linnaeus, who, in his “System of Nature” in 1758, produced a classification of men based on skin colour, and related this to other characteristics that elevated whites and were derogatory to Africans. A Swiss anthropologist of the time, Charles Bonnet, did likewise.

A whole new science of the study of human skulls and relating them to other racial characteristics was started in the eighteenth century; in this medical doctors were prominent. A German professor of medicine, Johann Blumenbach, collected skulls from all parts of the world and classified them according to overall physical appearance, with the Caucasian at the top of the scale and the black at the bottom. A Dutch surgeon and anatomist, Peter Camper, measured “facial angles” in a wide range of human and primate skulls that he had collected. He arranged them according to a scale of values with Europeans at the top, through Indians and Africans to apes.

Similar anthropological contributions were made by the well known English medical person, John Hunter, and the two Germans, Thomas Soemmerring and Johann von Goethe.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the leading surgeon, Sir William Lawrence, attempted to show that race and culture were not unconnected. In his “Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man”, Lawrence used the comparative study of human and primate skulls to state that the structure of the African approximated to that of the monkey, and went on to say that the moral and intellectual character of the African was inferior to that of the European. The pseudo-scientific comparative study of the skulls became a popular pastime for many intellectuals and scientists vying for a place in the racist sun, and it also gave a boost to ideas of grandeur and empire-building.

According to Fryer (14), English racism came of age with the contribution of Charles White’s lecture, in 1795, to the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, entitled “Account of the Regular Gradation in Man”, and published later. Charles White, a senior Manchester physician, after summarising the well known pseudoscientific racist views then current, declared that Africans were the lowest degree of the human race, close to the apes and a different species from whites, and then went on to extol the physical and intellectual attributes of the white race.

Racist views such as these were widely held in Britain at the time and indeed such was the situation until the beginning of the Second World War. They coincided with the denial of many basic rights not only to the colonised peoples abroad but also to the poor, the working class and the Irish at home. The author, Philip Curtin, argued that the belief in “Negro diseases”, as distinct from diseases from which white people tended to suffer, emphasized differences between the races which racists exploited (15).

Diseases frequently referred to as “Negro diseases” included yaws, parasitic diseases affecting the feet, tetanus, leprosy and elephantiasis. The fact that these were more related to the conditions under which the slaves lived and worked was explained by Patrick Browne, a Jamaican doctor and historian, who, although referring to’ “Negro diseases” of a peculiar nature’, added that: “When we consider the inconveniences under which these creatures labour, the toils they are obliged to undergo, the vicissitudes of heat and cold, to which they are exposed, and the grossness of their food in general, we ought not to be surprised if they had been still more slothful and sickly than they are commonly observed to be; or if the diseases to which they are obnoxious, had differed more apparently from our own.......”(16).

A further school of thought developed a teleological view of race and was especially favoured by the medical profession (17). This postulated that the resources of the tropics were for the benefit of the whole human race and must be exploited by the labour of those capable of working in such climes, i.e. the Africans. This view was supported by none other than Disraeli as well as by assorted explorers and academics.

Dr Robert Knox, a Scottish surgeon and anatomist, gave a series of lectures in the middle of the nineteenth century entitled “The Races of Man” in which he stressed anatomical differences between the white and black races and went on to suggest that blacks would not match up to whites in any conflict, as the whites were naturally superior in the arts of war.

The Anthropological Society of London was founded in 1843 and, amongst its membership were colonial governors, administrators, doctors and members of other professions. Governor Eyre of Jamaica, who put down a rising in Montego Bay, with great brutality, was a member of the Society. The Anthropological Society postulated, from time to time, such views as: the black was inferior to the white and closer to the ape; that his natural condition in the world is one of subordination to whites; and that he can be civilized only by whites.

Although Darwin’s “Theory of the Evolution of Species” stated all human beings were related to apes, philosophers and academics began to apply Darwin’s ideas to sociology and psychology. This further led to a whole pseudo-science of superior and inferior races, strong and weak human “stocks” and good and poor genes, all of which justified the domination of inferior peoples by a master race, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, and, finally, genocide. As Fryer writes: “Racist ideology justified genocide. Social Darwinism taught white people that Tasmanians were their brothers and sisters. It also taught them that the extermination of those brothers and sisters was an inevitable part of the struggle for existence, in which their own ‘superior’ race alone was destined to survive”.(18).

Fryer also goes on to quote Chidell: “Even the Australian native does not disappear soon enough to satisfy everyone. I remember an archdeacon, who was a true bishop to these poor folk, after a visit paid to one of their settlements, expressing the wish, from a heart overflowing with kindness, that they would all, being just brought into an appropriate frame of mind, at once depart to a better world” (19).

THE BLACK POOR

The absence of statistics makes it impossible to accurately assess the number of black people in England during the days of slavery. Suffice it to say that, although the majority lived in the slave ports of Liverpool, Bristol, and, especially, London, black slaves could be found in the great homes of the wealthy in most parts of rural England (20). In 1764, the number of blacks in London itself was said to number 20,000 and, in the entire country, 30,000, although other writers at about the time put the figure at about 15,000, and commented on their continued increase. The increase, after the Somerset case, according to Hecht, was through natural means as well as by the arrival in England of freed slaves who had fought on the side of the King in the American Revolution (21).

There were many reasons why blacks were imported into England and some of these have already been discussed. Besides the steadfast devotion that was often forthcoming from the Negro slave and which did not obtain with the white servant, and the possible snob value in higher social circles associated with the employment of a richly liveried black servant, the main reason for the employment of black slaves in England was economic. Negro slaves could be had for nothing, whereas English domestic servants needed to be paid the going rate.

Although a minority of slaves were freed by their owners after a varying spell of service, and either continued in service or left for greener pastures, slavery was the status of the great majority of blacks in the eighteenth century. They could be bought and sold, were bound to their owners, and were worked but not paid. Yet, their precise legal status remained undetermined till Emancipation.

If what obtained in the Caribbean and Americas was true slavery, then what was permitted in England was quasi-slavery. The black was not a slave and yet he was his master’s property. One legal authority in 1703 put it in the following manner:

“.................a foreign slave brought over into Engalnd is, upon Landing, ipso facto, free from slavery, though not from ordinary service”; and, in 1755, a description of the African’s legal status, after affirming that a slave became free upon entering the country, emphasized that he nevertheless remained his master’s property and was not at liberty to go into the service of another, nor demand wages like another servant.

In 1758, another legal authority stated that African slaves, brought into England and baptized, were free from slavery, though not from common service: that is, they were free from being bought and sold (22). Some, at least, of the London magistrates, however, refused even to rule that the slaves, once in England, were the property of their masters. The owners soon got around this by binding their slaves by articles of indenture, thus legitimating the whole relationship by a legal contract that could be enforced.

By the mid-eighteenth century, blacks were arriving in England from many different parts of the world, viz., Africa, the Caribbean, and from North and South America. They were mainly slaves, with a sprinkling of servants and freemen. The black population in the mid-eighteenth century was considerable, growing, very poor and largely separated from white society. The records relating to English poor relief, rarely, if ever refer to blacks and, because of widespread race prejudice, it was unlikely that the blacks ever benefited from whatever state benefits there were at the time.

Ships docking at the slave ports of Liverpool, Bristol and London after the voyages of the triangular or New World trades continued to bring Africans. The majority of these were destined for London, and headed for the black settlements and ghettos in the East End (Mile End), the West End (St Giles and Paddington) and along the river at Wapping, in the warrens, back lanes and alleyways of the poor.

Of all the small black communities in London, the most prominent was the one in the St Giles area and whose members were known to Londoners as the “Blackbirds of St Giles”. This phrase became a part of Cockney folk-lore, so much so that when London’s dockers rallied near Westminster two centuries later in support of Enoch Powell’s opposition to black immigration, their marching song was the familiar “Bye-bye blackbird”. Even then the spectre of uncontrolled black immigration in the heart of the Imperial metropolis was raised time and again by the pro-slavery and the (white) West Indian lobby to undermine the efforts of the Abolitionists and the progress towards Emancipation. This also had the added effect, then as now, of scaremongering and of creating hostility, on the part of the indigenous population, towards the Black Poor.

The black communities were accused of responsibility for crime and of harbouring black criminals from other parts of Britain as well as from abroad (23). Many, if not most, of these fears were completely without foundation but they increased the sense of vulnerability which all blacks felt, and added to the physical and mental stress that they experienced in their lives.

Black slaves arriving in Britain from the New World were immediately aware they were coming into a country where freedom was the norm. If they were in one of the large slave ports viz., Liverpool, Bristol or London, they soon learned that there were free black communities in these towns which gave succour to slaves they themselves had encouraged to flee.

The free blacks in the slave ports, and the overwhelming majority of them were poor, if not very poor, lived on the margins of society. It was unlikely, from a study of the records of English Poor Law Relief that, prior to about 1784, they were able to benefit from whatever statutory poor law relief that existed at the time.

As a result of the inconsistencies and ambiguities in the theory and practice of English law in relation to slavery in the metropolis itself, even free blacks were vulnerable, and feared recapture and repatriation to British colonies in the New World. The well-published activities of Granville Sharp, for example, and his notable efforts on behalf of slaves in Britain did not, and could not, affect the fate of more than a tiny minority of slaves in the face of strong institutional efforts to defend the practice of slavery and protect the slave trade and its profits. Many escaped slaves did not avoid recapture and a forced return to slavery.

Black slaves in Britain worked side by side with white domestics and experienced, at first hand, the differential treatment accorded by the masters to menials solely on the grounds of race and colour. This provided a further impetus to the slaves to escape and find refuge amongst their own in the city. This, more than anything else, resulted in an increase in the size of the black communities in the slave ports and in London, in particular.

The black slave population in Britain was in a precarious position and largely unprotected by the criminal justice system. Escaped slaves who were recaptured were commonly subjected to brutal treatment. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, England was known as a land of slaves, where the nobility and the high-born were slave owners and involved in the Triangular Trade. To criticise such an English institution was considered eccentric.

Shyllon(24) details the case of an escaped slave, Jonathan Strong, aged 17. His master was one David Lisle, a lawyer and slaveowner from Barbados, who was then living in London. In 1765, Lisle beat Jonathan so viciously on the head with a pistol that the barrel and lock became separated from the stock. Jonathan suffered brain damage as a result, and was left lame, ill and nearly blind. He was turned out by his master onto the streets. In this condition, he was discovered by Granville Sharp, who, through the good offices of his brother, William Sharp, an eminent surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, had him admitted to the hospital, where he stayed for three and a half months. He was discharged, partly recovered from his injuries and gained employment, through the good offices of the brothers Sharp, with an apothecary named Brown in Fenchurch Street. Two years later whilst still recovering, he was seized again by Lisle and imprisoned, but through the good offices of Granville Sharp, who was able to secure a trial, Jonathan was released by the Lord Mayor of London.

THE BLACK POOR IN LONDON

It is about the Black Poor in London that most has been written about, partly as a result of more complete initial documentation. By the middle of the eighteenth century, a black community as such was becoming recognizable in this city. The blacks here were from a variety of African backgrounds, but exhibited a strong sense of solidarity, cohesion and community in the face of societal pressures and prejudice. They recognised their common colour which was also the source of their common oppression and which automatically excluded them from white society. It was to be expected, therefore, that on the basis of this commonality, there would grow up a common black culture based on the blacks’ own culture and on the adoption of certain of white society’s own institutions. In the black community, religious occasions became social occasions as well. Festive seasons were celebrated in an all black enviroment in public houses and meeting places patronised almost exclusively by blacks. Even the solidarity with the London “Mob” did not, apparently, go as far as socializing together. The London “Mob” were the working people of London, the craftsmen and labourers, who demonstrated against class oppression and, on occasion, marched or ran through Shoreditch, the City, Westminster, and Southwark, increasing in numbers as they went, smashing the outsides of the homes of the nobility (25).They may have further comprised apprentices, journeymen, shopkeepers, small traders, Spitalfields weavers, coal merchants’ labourers, tanners, brewers, draymen and seamen.

The London “Mob” were aware of the social oppression they shared in common with the early black communities and helped protect and shelter runaway black slaves from their masters. The ties between these two groups were informal and operated on an ad hoc basis. Nevertheless, the co-operation between blacks and the London “Mob” were a source of serious concern to the Establishment who were aware of the maroon revolts in the New World and feared that there might be social unrest in the metropolitan capital on a scale hitherto unknown in Britain.(26).

Unlike the relations between the poor whites and the poor blacks, the relations between the poor blacks and their wealthy masters and owners were, in the main, based on fear and distrust, and condescension on the part of the masters. Life was tough and the rewards so few that the poor blacks could hardly be accused of taking anything away from the poor whites. Poor whites and poor blacks shared the same exploitation, deprivation and marginalisation, although the blacks were affected much more, being subject to legal discrimination as we shall see later. Both, however, were obliged to live in a twilight zone, and to survive by engaging in activities outside the pale of formal society.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, there was increasing hostility towards the blacks for several reasons. Firstly, there was the fear of miscegenation. As a result of the requirements of the slave trade, there was a disproportionate number of younger black males in the black population, although black serving-maids were not uncommon in England from the early seventeenth century onwards.

The subject of sexual relations between blacks and whites was an emotionally highly charged one. The most vehement critics of mixed unions were the white West Indian slaveowners who had themselves fathered numerous mulatto children and, later, even sold them into slavery. From the late Middle Ages, a mythology had grown around the sexual powers of the African male and the size of his genitals. Relations between black and white tended to be explained away on the misconceptions that were widely held amongst the great and the learned. Dr Johnson, on learning of the infatuation that a Lincolnshire lass had for his servant, Francis Barber, said, “Frank......carried the empire of Cupid further than most men”. The Duchess of Queensberry was allegedly infatuated with her black servant, Soubise, and it is said that he became as famous in the boudoirs of stately homes as he was in London’s whore-houses, and was “as general a lover as Don Juan” (27).

Other causes that were given for the hostility of white society towards blacks were the alleged burden on the poor rates, and the threat to person and property by a disadvantaged and deprived black population. The question of the burden on the poor rates has already been discussed briefly. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the poor black was in any way more prone to crime than his white counterpart, although then, as now, young blacks came up, from time to time, to the Old Bailey to be tried for petty crime.

Probably, the commonest complaint against black people in the eighteenth century was the threat they allegedly posed to white employment. Many free blacks were employed in domestic service or as seamen and it is significant that the protests against black labour did not come from white domestics or seamen but from the white West India and pro-slavery lobby, who were also connected with the City. It was not surprising, therefore, that, in 1731, the Lord Mayor of London, who also held, at the time, certain juridicial powers, issued a solemn proclamation prohibiting apprenticeships for black people, some of whom had been trying to learn a skill: “It is ordered by this Court, That for the future no Negroes or other Blacks be suffered to be bound Apprentices at any of the Companies of the City to any Freeman thereof; and that copies of this Order be printed and sent out to the Masters and Wardens of the several Companies of this City, who are required to see the same at all times hereafter duly observed” (28).

As Fryer writes, to be young and black............meant scraping an existence at the very bottom of the social heap. Especially in London, where black people were not, after 1731, allowed to learn a trade (29).

Poverty in eighteenth century England was as devastating in the rural as it was in the urban areas. The underclass, the Black and the Irish, sometimes resorted to crime not as a way of life but as a very last resort in the struggle to survive in a hostile enviroment. For this, they could be imprisoned or hanged. Blacks could be found in prisons all over the country and not just in the slave ports.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there was a sudden increase in the numbers of the Black Poor in the English slave ports, and especially in London. The reasons for this were many. Some of the new arrivals were the servants and attendants of officers who had fought in the British Army in the American War of Independence and were now returning home; some were ex-slaves who, at the beginning of the American War, had volunteered to fight on the side of the British King in return for their freedom at the end of the war, and whose lives would have been in danger under the new revolutionary government. Most, however, were black sailors who had been demobilized after the peace treaty of 1783.

The loyalist blacks were part of a much larger contingent of exiled American loyalists, most of whom migrated to eastern Canada after the war. The blacks, however, found the bleak climate of Nova Scotia quite inhospitable and preferred, instead, to come to Britain.

The loyalists, both black and white, were entitled to statutory financial aid from the British government. There was an informal temporary pension scheme which gave the refugees financial support until they were able to establish themselves either in England or in the Imperial possessions abroad. Furthermore, Parliament set up the Commissioners for American Claims to whom the loyalists could submit claims for property that they had lost in America as a result of their service to the King. According to Norton(30), the pensions and claims examiners discriminated severely against the black loyalists in the making of awards and grants for relief. Out of a total of 47 blacks who applied for assistance under both schemes only one was awarded compensation for property losses, three received tiny annual allowances and twenty were given very small sums of money ranging from £5 to £10 as a once only grant.

On the other hand, very few whites were denied any assistance, as opposed to half of the blacks who were. The allowances given to the whites were quite generous and those who received grants received sums ranging from £25 upwards. The pensions and claims examiners did not attempt to cloak the racially discriminatory manner in which they assessed the claims applications, justifying their attitudes by such specious reasoning as the argument that the blacks had already benefited fron the War, firstly, by coming to a free country (Britain) and, secondly, by having gained their freedom from slavery, and, had, therefore, no right to expect anything from the Government.

The examiners had failed to realise that these arguments were contrary to the will of Parliament. Furthermore, as it happened, those blacks who were given their awards had only received them after the intervention of well-known and influential white refugees.

Unable to obtain employment and with no means of support, the black loyalists soon swelled the ranks of the Black Poor in London, crowding the capital’s disease-breeding streets and alleys. Reduced to begging, they suffered from all the problems associated with poverty, disease and malnutrition. The Black Poor were regarded as a separate problem and London parishes were unwilling to carry out their statutory duties towards them in regard to poor relief and help in cases of illnesses and invalidism. Living in conditions of degradation, the Black Poor were visible because of their colour and were scapegoated for the problems of the City’s ghettos.

As a result of his role in the well known legal cases involving slaves, and his own invlvement in the black cause, numerous blacks in the 1780s sought out Granville Sharp to help them out in their predicament. Already involved in the cases of about 400 blacks, Granville Sharp now felt that help to the blacks would have to be organised on a more formal basis.

Acommittee was formed from a group of men already involved in the antislavery lobby and under the chairmanship of Jonas Hanway. It was to be called the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor, and one of its first activities was to raise funds. It soon collected several hundred pounds and went about distributing relief at two centres, one at Paddington, in West London, and the other at Mile End in London’s East End. A separate Hospital for blacks was opened in Warren Street (31).

Blacks had found it difficult to obtain sick relief under the statutory obligations of the Poor Law Commissioners and, in any case, only seemed able to enter the big London general hospitals for treatment if they were under white patronage e.g. when the slave Jonathan Strong received treatment for his head injuries at St Bartholomew’s Hospital through the good offices of the Sharp brothers, and when a West African, William Cudjo, receiving his schooling in England under the auspices of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, died in Guy’s Hospital in 1764 after treatment for a mental breakdown (32).

It appeared to the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor that urgent medical treatment for London’s blacks was necessary. It is important to stress that there were already, at this time, a number of large general hospitals in London that could have catered for the black poor had they so chosen. The special hospital for blacks cost about £10 a week to run. In the first few weeks after its opening a total of 40 - 50 blacks had already been admitted; they were in a miserable state, suffering from a number of complaints ranging from abscesses and fever to consumption. However, those admitted were only the most seriously ill of the blacks who had sought treatment at the hospital.

Many of the patients arrived for treatment almost naked as it was the custom for the poor to pawn or dispose of their shirts before going into hospital. Clothing was distributed to about 250 people. Sixpence a day was given to any black in need and yet there were many in a serious condition from diseases contracted through the severity of the weather and other causes (33). Some blacks were given assistance to enable them to return to sea or to find jobs in the Imperial possessions.

With many blacks on poor relief, Treasury funds were quickly spent. A year later about a thousand blacks were receiving assistance offered jointly by the state and philanthropists, and the Committee soon came to the conclusion that other solutions must be sought for the deep-rooted problems of the black poor. That was when their thoughts turned towards founding a new “home” for the blacks on the West African coast (viz., Sierra Leone). This turned out to be a failure. It was deportation by another name.

THE EAST INDIAN COMMUNITY IN BRITAIN

A sizeable proportion of the Black Poor in Britain were Indians and these latter were, in the main, lascars or seamen. A smaller number were domestics and the manner in which they were brought to England was similar to that which brought African slaves to the country. High civil administrators and military officers, returning home to live in comfort, brought Indian servants with them. There was also the widely held belief that a difficult journey back home from the East could be made more comfortable by the services and attentions of a good servant.

The legal status of the Indian domestic was identical to that of the African. He or she was completely at the disposal of the master and, in the eighteenth century, were freely bought and sold on the open market (34). Besides these two groups, there was a much smaller number of Indian entertainers in Britain, especially during the sixteenth century.

Whilst their ships were in port in England, Indian sailors had to live in the most filthy and crowded conditions. They lived six to eight in a single room without beds or furniture. When ill, they were sent to the workhouses or “hospitals”, where they lay uncared for, and unable to communicate their wants. Their problems were brought to public notice when during the winter of 1856 - 1857, eight lascars died from cold and hunger. At the inquest, the coroner was recorded as saying that over the previous few years, he had held forty inquests on Indian seamen who had died in similar circumstances (35). Later that year, the Church Missionary Society opened a Strangers’ Rest Home for black seamen in Limehouse, in London’s poverty-stricken East End. It was estimated that two thousand lascars visited Britain every year.

BRITISH JUSTICE AND THE LEGAL PROFESSION

The black community in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was in the main unable to benefit from the protection supposedly afforded by the legal process. The law was weighted in favour of the wealthy, the privileged and the slaveowners. It reflected the social, political and economic organisation of society and, therefore, could not help the black person when the interests of profit were at stake. The lowly black person in Britain, moreover, was rarely made aware of his rights under the law, such as they were.

Walvin believes that for more than two centuries of black history in England, the law was responsible for maintaining the African in his underclass status: “English law was a vital factor in the subjection, dehumanization and enslavement of generations of Africans. Statute law made possible the growth of the slave trade; the King in Parliament supervised the evolution of colonial slave laws; generations of English judges denied the black community any meaningful legal protection ...........a legal system committed to the preservation and defence of racial exploitation. One might indeed go so far as to claim that with the obvious exception of the (white) West India lobby, no single section of English society proved more influential in moulding the abject experiences of England’s black minority than the legal fraternity” (36).

BLACK COMMUNITIES OUTSIDE LONDON

Outside London, the largest black community in eighteenth century Britain was in Liverpool, followed closely by that in Bristol. These were the other two important slave ports in the country, although with the opening of the Bridgewater Canal linking Liverpool with Manchester in 1767 and of the Grand Trunk to Birmingham in 1777, the importance of Liverpool outgrew that of Bristol. With lower wages and the apprentice system, moreover, Liverpool ships could be more cheaply manned. Also, Liverpool’s more northerly situation resulted in its shipping being less prone to the attacks of pirates. In the second half of the eighteenth century, blacks were a common sight in Liverpool and they comprised slaves, escaped slaves, freedmen, servants and seamen. Pauperism was common and the first slums came into being in the cheap housing near the docks. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Toxteth Park contained about a third of the town’s poor. Here the city’s blacks lived in the cheaply constructed and crowded courts and cellars lined by grimy narrow streets into which sunshine and fresh air hardly penetrated (37).

Just as in London, there was a degree of solidarity between the poor blacks and the poor whites. A story is told of how eight black Liverpool beggars were arrested by a Portuguese sea captain and jailed, pending the departure of his ship, later to be sold into slavery. Their white fellow prison inmates prevented the prison authorities from surrendering the blacks to a Portuguese detachment and, on the next day, they were released by a local magistrate. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the character of the black population in Liverpool changed a little; whilst most of the blacks were still seamen, slaves or beggars (because of unemployment), a few were apprenticed to tradesmen and artisans. Others were self-employed or entertainers. Fewer still were intellectuals from America or the Caribbean. To prevent the further settlement of blacks, Parliament passed an Act in 1823 aimed at reducing the number of blacks entering Liverpool by way of ship.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Liverpool’s blacks remained unorganised. Facing daily discrimination at every level, they were the most vulnerable section of society. It was natural, therefore, that they would develop a sense of group solidarity. As in London, there were public houses in Liverpool where the clientele was entirely black, but where merriment and dancing were not in short supply. When Charles Dickens toured the dockland area with a police superintendent in 1861, the superintendent had this to say: “They generally kept together, these poor fellows, because they were at a disadvantage singly, and liable to slights in the neighbouring streets” (38).

THE VIRTUAL DISAPPEARANCE OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY IN BRITAIN IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

In the 100 years between the early part of the nineteenth century and World War I, there occurred a profound diminuition in the number of black people living in Britain, until there were just a few tiny pockets in the slum areas of the old slave ports. This demographic pattern speaks volumes. The arguments put forward by Fryer and Walvin(39) suggest that this diminuition, occurring within two generations, was due to the combined effects of a decrease in immigration, consequent upon the abolition of the slave trade, and intermarriage.

When the position of the black poor underclass at the beginning of the nineteenth century is considered together with the total absence of a discernible mulatto culture in the latter part of the nineteenth century as well as the social sanctions against miscegenation, then the conclusion, that the pronounced black presence in Britain at the beginning of the last century gradually died out, is inescapable. That this occurred as a result of grinding poverty, physical and mental stress, malnutrition and disease is more credible than the argument that a severely disadvantaged and exploited black underclass “disappeared” by intermarrying into higher socio-economic groups. This latter outcome was, moreover, unlikely in the case of a social group that was obliged, socially at least, to keep to itself.

Was this a slow genocide?