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Indentured servitude ran alongside slavery but with the end of slavery it increased, the poverty stricken Irish and the Scottish were caught up in the need for labourers across the British Empire, and in India many Indians found themselves leaving their homeland forever, transplanted to such places like Guyana, Trinidad, Jamaica, Fiji, strangers in a strange land with only the memory of their homeland to comfort them at night. Indentured servitude could be as brutal and as long lasting as slavery as we we know it could be, men and women found themselves contracted to do a job that paid very little and incurred big debts. And the debt didn't end with your death, it often got passed onto your heirs, so the children of the indentured servants in turn became indentured themselves. |
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What was it like to be mixed race in the 18th century? Not easy, even for those who were lucky enough to be born free of the yoke of slavery. Dido Elizabeth Belle was more fortunate than other girls of age and racial background; she had a comfortable life under the care and protection of a powerful Judge and Earl, William Murray. She never knew what it was like to be a slave. And when she did finally marry, she married a White man, thus moving one step further away from her African heritage. Let Justice Be Done is very much a fictional account of Dido's life, it is based on extensive historical research but it is also based on the "what if" pretext, what if a young girl looked out of her safe gilded cage and saw the horror that could have been hers to live if her wealthy white father had not acknowledged her and along with his powerful Uncle ensured that she lived and died a free woman of colour? Dido Elizabeth Belle was no no tragic Mulatto, history, what is known of it, seems to prove she lived a happy and fairly fruitful life, she was educated, married well and was much loved by her aristrocratic White family even if they did not always treat her on a par with her white cousin Lady Elizabeth Lindsay. |
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Kenwood House, home of the First Earl of Mansfield in the 18th century. Taken from the English Heritage website: Set in leafy grounds beside Hampstead Heath, this outstanding house was remodelled by Robert Adam between 1764 and 1779. He transformed the original brick building into a majestic villa for the great judge, Lord Mansfield. The richly decorated library is one of Adam's great masterpieces, a feast for the eyes.
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The Somerset Ruling 1772 The celebrated Somerset ruling of 1772 concerned a slave's liberty and status as property. The slave James Somerset (or Sommersett) was the property of a Boston customs official, Charles Stewart. Somerset was brought to England. After two years he escaped, but he was recaptured on 26 November 1771 and was forced onto a ship bound for Jamaica. With help from Granville Sharpe, a humanitarian anti-slavery campaigner, a writ of habeas corpus was granted by Lord Mansfield, the Lord Chief Justice, ordering the captain of the ship on which Somerset was incarcerated to produce Somerset before a court. The case was repeatedly adjourned. Somerset's legal team argued that although slavery was tolerated in the colonies, the Court of King's Bench was bound to apply the law of England.
Mansfield eventually ruled in 1772 that 'no master ever was allowed here (England) to take a slave by force to be sold abroad because he deserted from his service...therefore the man must be discharged'.
And so James Somerset won his freedom.
Lord Mansfield's judgment had a profound effect on slaves. Many of them misunderstood the ruling to mean that slaves were emancipated in Britain. This was not the case. The decision was that no slave could be forcibly removed from Britain and sold into slavery.
Despite Lord Mansfield's ruling, slave owners continued recapturing their runaway slaves and shipping them back to the colonies. Numerous newspaper advertisements of the time show that Black slaves were still being bought and sold in England. A few years later, in 1785 Mansfield himself ruled that 'black slaves in Britain were not entitled to be paid for their labour' (free Black people were, however, paid). The legal status of African slaves in Britain and its colonies remained unclear until the early 19th century.
In 1807, with the passing of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, the slave trade became illegal; and 21 years later almost all Black men, women and children held in bondage in the British empire were granted their freedom.
Taken from the website Black Presence Asian & Black History in Britain. |
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Black people have been in the UK from Roman times, some even settled down after they had finished their service and made their home in the British Isles. In Elizabethan England there were Black People living in London, over 5,000 of them and they were gradually absorbed into mainstreem society by intermarrying with local men and women. |
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