Black History Month: A journey through history along the River Thames
The first Black History Month in the UK took place in 1987, marking the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean and the 25th anniversary of the Organisation of African Unity.
To understand our present, it is important to look to the past. With this in mind, we want to use the opportunity to highlight the often unexplored relationship between Black people and the River Thames, building on and updating our 2025 article.
Roman Times
There is evidence that people of African ancestry lived and worked in Britain as far back as Roman times. In AD 43, the Romans invaded Britain, and around AD 47 they established Londinium, present day London, on the banks of the River Thames.
Londinium was a diverse city, with people travelling there from across the Roman Empire.
Research has shown that the remains of several adults of African descent were found in a cemetery in Southwark, providing evidence of the presence of people of African ancestry in Roman London.
The Tudor Period
Historians have also uncovered fascinating evidence of Black Tudors.
It is estimated that around 300 Black people were living in England and Scotland during this period. Historical documents show that Black people were living, working and intermarrying within British society.
One such person was Jacques Francis, an expert swimmer and salvage diver who was part of a team hired to recover guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose in 1546. Originally from Mauritania, Francis became the first known African to give evidence in an English court of law when his Venetian employer, Peter Paulo Corsi, was accused of theft by a consortium of Italian merchants based in Southampton. Francis gave evidence at the High Court of Admiralty in London. The Blackfriars area, near the River Thames, is close to where the court was held.
Another notable figure was John Blanke, a Black trumpeter who performed at the courts of both King Henry VII and King Henry VIII. He lived in the household of Henry VII at the Tower of London, and there are records showing that he asked Henry VIII for a pay rise and a promotion in his role as a trumpeter.
Blanke would also have visited and worked at the Palace of Placentia in Greenwich, near the River Thames and close to where the National Maritime Museum now stands. He performed at Henry VIII’s coronation in 1509 and, in 1511, at the Westminster Tournament, a huge celebration held in honour of the new prince, Henry.
The child was born to Katherine of Aragon on 1 January 1511 but sadly died only ten days after the tournament in February.
The Stuart Period and the Atlantic Slave Trade
During the Stuart period, London’s Black population was present at a time when England’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade was expanding. Although English involvement in the enslavement and transportation of Africans had begun earlier, it intensified significantly from the mid-17th century onwards, particularly after the establishment of the Company of Royal Adventurers in 1663 and the Royal African Company in 1672.
English involvement predated the Stuart period. In 1555, the London merchant John Lok brought five enslaved Africans from Guinea to England, while other English merchants subsequently participated in the capture and enslavement of Africans. John Hawkins became an important early figure in England’s transatlantic slave trade. Between 1562 and 1569, he made three voyages to Sierra Leone, transporting around 1,200 Africans across the Atlantic and selling them to Spanish settlers in the Caribbean. His voyages represented an early stage of England’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, which expanded substantially during the 17th century.
Between about 1500 and 1900, Europeans forcibly uprooted millions of people from across West Africa and West Central Africa and transported them to the Americas. This journey became known as the Middle Passage.
Enslaved Africans were forcibly transported by ship from the West Coast of Africa to the Americas. It is estimated that around two million enslaved people died during the Middle Passage as a result of the horrific conditions on board. For those who survived the journey, further cruelty awaited them in the Americas, which often resulted in death.
18th Century and 19th Century England
Many people involved in British colonial activities, including ship’s captains, colonial officials, merchants, slave traders and plantation owners, brought enslaved Africans to Britain as servants.
Over time, Britain became the biggest slave trading country in Europe. Over 250 years, more than three million people were taken from Africa and forced into slavery by British traders. Together, the slave trade and the goods produced through slavery helped make Britain wealthy.
By the latter half of the 18th century, England had a Black population of around 15,000 people. They lived mainly in major port cities such as London, Liverpool and Bristol, but also in market towns and villages across the country. The majority worked in domestic service, both paid and unpaid.
Although slavery had no legal basis in England, the law was often misunderstood or misinterpreted. Black people who had previously been enslaved in overseas colonies and were then brought to England by their owners were often still treated as enslaved people.
Some formerly enslaved people were baptised because they believed this would help secure their freedom. Others took advantage of being on English soil and escaped. During this period, newspapers carried notices seeking the return of ‘runaway slaves’ from ships that had docked on the Thames.
During the latter half of the 18th century, the law surrounding slavery was tested in the courts, most notably in 1772 in the case of James Somerset. The case, which took place at Westminster Hall located by the River Thames, helped to galvanise the anti-slavery movement in Britain.
The Public Advertiser reported in 1772 that 200 Black people celebrated the Somerset verdict at a pub in Westminster. The case was presided over by Lord Mansfield. His niece was Elizabeth Dido Belle, the daughter of an enslaved woman.
Dido Belle lived a relatively privileged life, which was unusual for Black people living in Britain at the time. After marrying John Davinier in 1793, she established a family life in Pimlico, London.
Despite the legal developments surrounding slavery in England, there was always a danger of recapture and the prospect of being returned to a far harsher form of enslavement, and potentially facing an early death in the West Indies, for those who escaped from their owners in Britain.
British authors Thomas Day and John Bicknell wrote a poem based on the true story of an enslaved man who was kidnapped from England and separated from his English wife. Rather than face a return to slavery, he shot himself on a boat on the Thames.
Charles Ignatius Sancho
Charles Ignatius Sancho is an important figure in this period of British history.
Sancho was born around 1729 on a slave ship travelling from Guinea to the Spanish West Indies. As a toddler, while still enslaved, he was brought to Greenwich to work for three sisters near Dartmouth Row. There, he met the Duke of Montagu.
After the duke’s death in 1749, Sancho ran away from the household and persuaded the duke’s widow to employ him. He became her butler and the head of a large household near Greenwich Park.
During the last six years of his life, Sancho’s public profile grew considerably. He opened a grocery shop in Charles Street, Westminster, on the site where the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office now stands.
He composed numerous pieces of music and became best known as an epistolary writer, producing letters that offered accounts and critiques of 18th century culture and politics.
Sancho maintained lively correspondence with friends and acquaintances from a wide range of backgrounds, including aristocrats, artists, actors, bankers and booksellers.
As a literate man who owned property, Sancho was eligible to vote. He became the first recorded Black voter in a Westminster election when he voted for Charles James Fox, the abolitionist who later proposed the successful bill to abolish the slave trade in 1807. Fox wrote to Sancho to thank him for his support. Like Sancho, however, Fox would not live to see the bill become law.
Sancho died in 1780 and became the first Black man to have an obituary published in the British press. His letters were later published posthumously in two volumes, raising the considerable sum of £500 for his widow and surviving children.
Sancho remains an important figure in British history, and much of his life was connected to places close to the Thames.
Phillis Wheatley
Another prominent Black author associated with London was Phillis Wheatley, c. 1753 to 5 December 1784.
Wheatley was an American author who is considered the first African American author to publish a book of poetry. In 1773, she travelled to London to publish her first collection of poems.
While in London, she visited several of the capital’s famous landmarks, including the Tower of London, Greenwich Park and Westminster Abbey.
Francis Barber
Francis Barber was born in Jamaica around 1735. He was born with the name Quashey, indicating his Ghanaian roots.
He came to Britain with a planter from Jamaica and, for one year, attended school in the small village of Barton near Darlington in Yorkshire.
As he grew older, he entered the service of his owner’s son, who sent him to work for the writer Samuel Johnson following the death of Johnson’s wife.
Two years later, the plantation owner died and, in his will, left Francis £12 and his freedom.
As a young man, Barber subsequently ran away to Cheapside, where he found work as an apothecary’s assistant. The River Walbrook, a tributary of the Thames, flows beneath the southern part of Cheapside. Despite leaving, Barber remained in contact with Samuel Johnson.
In 1758, Barber went to sea and served for two years aboard HMS Stag.
Francis Barber has descendants who live in Britain today, providing another important link between Britain’s Black history and the present day.
For more information, please view link here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082x0h6
This article was written by Liz Gyekye, Communications Manager at Thames21.