Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Black Victorians

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

Why is there an assumption that Victorian Britain was white? Who does this mean is missing from our history books? And how can we find out more about the lives of black people in the Victorian Era?Today, Kate is joined by Dr Keshia Abrahams and Dr John Woolf, authors of ‘Black Victorians: Hidden in History’. Keshia and John introduce us to physician George Rice, abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond and more.Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Sophie Gee.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!For your chance to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books (including a signed copy of Dan Snow's On This Day in History), please fill out this short survey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister, jumping in, as usual, with your fair do's warning. Fair do's, this is an episode that is going to contain adult themes. There'll be topics around enslaved people, race, colonialism, and as always, a lot of swearing. And if that's just something that you don't want to listen to today, don't even worry about it. I'll catch you next time.

Victorian Britain. industrial growth and imperial expansion. The time of Charles Dickens, Florence Nightingale, Lewis Carroll and Charles Darwin. But I wonder if you've heard of Sarah Forbes Benetta, the African orphan who became the protege of Queen Victoria. Or George Rice, the medic who saved hundreds of children through his pioneering work in vaccines.

Or perhaps I'd be Wells, the badass international journalist, feminist, an early leader in the civil rights movement. Maybe you've heard of Henry Box Brown, a man who escaped slavery by actually posting himself in a box to the abolitionists. Well, if you haven't heard these names, by the end of this episode, you certainly will have. What do you look for a man?

Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets,

the History of Sex Scandal and Society, with me, Kate Lister. What was it like to be a black person in Victorian Britain? How do we know what it was like? And why don't we hear more about black Britain in the Victorian period and the multiculturalism of the 19th century in British class,

Why do we always learn about the workhouse and gruel? Where are these lessons? Well, today I'm so happy to be joined by Dr Keshe Abraham and Dr John Wolfe to find out about their research on Black Britain in the 19th century. Tell you how excited I am to be joined between the sheets by John Wolfe and Keisha Abraham. Hello! Hello! Hello! I can't believe that you are here with me on what is the publication day of your new book, Black Victorians. Shouldn't you be in a bath full of champagne somewhere toasting your own success? That's where I would be with my publication day. How are you feeling?

Are you excited about this? It's amazing. It's just really amazing being able to talk to on the day that the book comes out, knowing that people are actually going to be able to look at it. I'm still amazed, holding it in my own hands and seeing all of this work come to fruition and how beautiful I think the book came out looking. And when people start reading it, I always find that's an even weird bit. It's like you've gone through the whole thing, you've written it, you printed it, and then people

actually read it. Oh my God. Can you tell me a bit about what made you want to write this history, the history of black Victorians? Where did that come from? Well, so my first book was on the history of freak shows, and I'd been exploring like the intersections between disability and ethnicity in the 19th century and how those sorts of identities were constructed as different. And so I was kind of researching more and more around the sort of phenomenon of ethnographic exhibitions or human zoos quite popular in the 19th century. But the more I was researching, the more I was becoming aware that there was a Black Victorian presence much broader and wider than these ethnographic exhibitions. And the idea of consigning the Black British presence in the 19th century

simply to these forms of entertainment seemed incredibly misplaced. So started doing a bit more research and those fantastic historians out there who have done a wealth of work prior to what we've done. And notes were compiled. And then with Dr. Abraham, we got together. She'd worked with my dad closely on black Jewish dialogue. And so it kind of went from Dr. Wolf Senior down to Dr. Wolf Jr. Continuing this sort of collaborative relationship. It's one of those things, there's no doubt that we're absolutely guilty of whitewashing history, or at least what we think of as history. I haven't liked to think that there was some historians about 100 years ago, and they all got together and went, we all talked about all the kings and queens,

and they went, yeah, definitely. And then someone at some point went, did anyone talk about the working classes and everyone went, oh shit, no, we didn't. And they went and went and they came back a bit later and went, did anyone do the women, does anyone look at women's history? And then eventually, sometime in the last 20 years, someone went, oh my God, all the people of colour. No, we haven't spoken about them at all.

And Britain and Europe was so multicultural in the 19th century. It seems bizarre that we haven't had these conversations until relatively recently. Yeah, absolutely. And it's so interesting to me to think about how that contributes to the shaping of nation, right? And that, you know, Britain's not the only place where this has happened, but it's such a large example of this, right? Having such a wealth of history of writing. Why do you think it is that when, I suppose one of those things is when you actually

seriously think about it, of course, the Victorian period wouldn't have just been white people wandering around Britain. But there is this kind of strange assumption that people, people seem to assume that it was, or if there were black people that they were a tiny minority, or that they were, like you were saying, John, in the entertainment industry. Where has that come from, do you think? It's just a lack of historical resource, or why do we think of it like that? I think it's a combination of many factors. Some of it is a lack of interest, active whitewashing at the time or since, just the assumption that Britain has been mono-ethnically white and that

change with the Windrush generation. So I think there's a bit of a historical laziness. I also think there's some sort of archival reasons for that being the case. You know, ethnicity wasn't included in the national census until 1991. So you've got this dearth of information around ethnicity in the censuses. So you've got some sort of evidential issues with the archives that has sort of helped conceal this history, if you like. Wow. Okay. Then how on earth do you go about researching that? do you find out whether or not somebody was white or black or what their race was, if it's not recorded on a census? Was that difficult in the research? Yeah, well, I think there's two sides to this, and I'll hand over to my partner for the American side. But I think certainly in

terms of research in Britain, it was exceptionally difficult. And you had clear examples of black Victorians in all walks of life from, you know, sports, entertainment, theology, law, and it was just about kind of shining a light on those individual examples. And then sometimes it was about digging a bit deeper through the wealth of primary material that exists in the 19th century to find reference to black Victorians and kind of extrapolate from that. But, you know, it was very difficult. There's not kind of clear demographic figures that give us an exact number. But we were really interested in those individual stories and what those individual stories told us and illuminated, not just about a particular,

individual, but also the broader contexts in which they operated, the networks that they had, and in turn what that tells us about the era. Wow. Kesh, how did you go about researching this? What was it like with the American archives? Was race sort of more prominent in the archives there? No, not really. I mean, it's a really similar kind of narrative.

And I think so much of this has to do with who decides who people are, how people are categorized, what people wrote about themselves, how people are kind of seen phenotypically and then assigned a particular position, social position. One of the things I find really fascinating in U.S. literary history is the use of the term written by him or herself in an emancipation narrative. And I think this is one of the kind of early articulations of people saying, you know, there are more of us than you realize that have these really complicated and really interesting histories to be read, found the ability to kind of say for ourselves what our position was in relationship to history, what the things that have been done. I think, you know, it was really interesting to me many years ago, realizing that emancipation narratives or like the broader term that people usually use as slave narratives,

weren't really being taught even in the US until, I'd say, like, the late 1990s, you know, 1980s. So you still only have like a really small number of texts that people are aware of, and this spills that into their whole perception, right, of who was where, when, in history. Wow, that's incredible. I mean, I suppose one of the other things that people might make the assumptions of is that black people would experience really terrible stigma and prejudice and racism in Victorian Britain, for example.

I mean, is that the case? Is that what was Victorian attitudes to race? I think like across the piece, there were different attitudes. And as we've said, the black Victorians were evident in all walks of life. And they were broad barriers and discourses to overcome in terms of Victorian attitude to race. So in the realm of science, for example, you had the advancing theory. of polygenism, which stipulated that humans were of separate biological categories, and those categories made individuals innately different, and on that biological basis were piled on different mental and moral attributes.

So you had in the realm of science a hardening of racial attitudes, which, you know, wasn't shared by your average man, woman and girl necessarily, but certainly within the realm of science. And then in the realm of entertainment as well, And we've made reference to ethnographic exhibitions. You have the rise of blackface minstrelsy. Of course, yeah. These sorts of forms of entertainment peddled racist descriptions of black Victorians.

And that's before you even get onto events abroad, the Indian mutineers it was called, or the American Civil War. These sort of crystallised and hardened racial debate and attitudes in Britain. And then, of course, you have the rise of empire, which further fuelled this sense. of difference and British right to rule people of all colour from across the globe. So you had these broader discourses that also impacted on everyday life. Wow. So you focused on some of the individual stories of people that were living in these circumstances, people that were living with these kind of narratives swirling around them

and these debates and these attitudes. Whose lives did you focus on? And was there anybody that kind of really leapt out of the research of you? Like, this is a really important story. Well, I mean, there were so many different individuals that we discussed, and there was some we had to leave out. And Keisha, there was some that you had kind of come across in your research, right? Yeah, and we ended up with really just, I think a really nice balance of different kind of historical figures that kind of give you that sense of different genres, different areas that people were working in. So like Sarah Remen, I really was so excited about the opportunity to think and write about Anna Julia Cooper in this time, Ira Aldrich, you know, people who, you know, we kind of.

kind of grew up reading about in the U.S. a lot, especially Anna Julie Cooper, I would say, Adi B. Wells in particular as well. Tell me a little bit about Ida Wells. Well, in the U.S., you know, we study her so much as a freedom fighter, as a liberator, as someone who was before civil rights, but a kind of subconsciousness kind of razor. Very clear about anti-racist sentiment. I think her time in the UK is what really influenced the ways in which we've come to read her here in the U.S. How long was she in the UK for? She spent, it was in the kind of 1890s that she came to the UK and did a series of lectures across the breadth of the UK.

And she was kind of part of this broader movement of black abolitionists, African American abolitionists coming to the UK. And she was denouncing in particular segregation and lynching in America. But prior to her, there were a whole range of different abolitionists who were denouncing American slavery in the UK and generating actually a lot of popular support. poor for that. How was she received in the UK? Well, it's interesting. Yesterday, I was just reading a little piece about an exchange that she had with Frederick Douglass going into a cafe in England. Really? Oh my God. Yeah. Okay. It's the sense that she's concerned that they can't go into this place. And he's like, no, no, no, it's okay. We can go in there. It's fine. So this idea that, you know, in the U.S. there's particular kind of segregation of what he could go where wasn't exactly the same in the UK

at the time. And so, you know, it kind of leads her in, they have this conversation in the cafe. And it's like how people find a sense of agency, no matter of their circumstances. And it makes me think a lot about these two figures, like these two just as small examples of people who would have been potentially in contact with one another, and what those networks were able to kind of create that we're still benefiting from now. That is incredible, isn't it? I think the singer and dancer Josephine Baker said there was similar quotations from her when she arrived in Paris. and she was so moved that she could just go into a restaurant and that it wasn't segregated.

I remember reading her biography and being really taken aback by that. It's awful. And she couldn't quite comprehend that she could do that. It was very moving. I'll be back with Keshe and John after this short break. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit. Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway.

Visit Chief Poetan as he prepares for war with the British. See Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race. I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday, Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit.

A little bit about Sarah Forbes Bonetta. So Sarah Forbes Bonetta, she's one of those Black Victorians who, you know, sometimes there's this assumption that Black Victorians were only going to be found in the lowliest stations of life. And she really smashes that idea. She was born in the Kingdom of Dahomey, as it was known. And she was handed over essentially as a gift from the King of Dahomey, as it was known. From the King of Dahomey to Queen Victoria. And she was brought back to the UK as a gift, if you like. And historian Caroline Bressy has done some fantastic work on her life.

But she sort of finds herself within the upper echelons of Victorian society. And the Queen and those around her really see her. Her life in a way is co-opted. And they see her as an opportunity to improve Africans through her. by training her up within missionary endeavors. So she goes back, she trains as a missionary, she comes back to the UK again, she has a close and intimate relationship with Queen Victoria.

You know, she's well known within the corridors of Buckingham Palace. And then she marries in 1862 and ultimately goes back to West Africa. But she's just one of a number of examples of black Victorians whose lives were really co-opted to serve a broader point, but also highlighting to us that there were renowned and respected black Victorians within the upper echelons of Victorian society. This was someone within Queen Victoria's close circle. Yeah, very much so.

And she has a daughter, Sarah Benetta, and that daughter becomes their god's daughter to Queen Victoria, Victoria Davies. And she actually then goes on to, she studies at Cheltenham Ladies College and then goes back to West Africa. So there was this sort of familial connection. beyond Sarah Forbes-Benetta with the Queen. Is there anything that's left to us written in Sarah's voice, like a diary or letters?

Do we know how she felt about being sent to missionary school? And, yeah, is there any sense of what she thought of this? Yeah, that's such a good question. And I think that's one of the difficulties with this research is getting the voice of these individuals can be very hard. And she does write some letters. She was initially reluctant to marry. Oh.

She marries in 1862. and the man that she was marrying was much older, he was widowed, and she wasn't sure. Who set that up? Why did she, was that the queen? The queen was involved, and Victorian morals stipulated that, you know, the making of a proper woman required marrying a man. But, you know, it looks like after that they had a relatively happy marriage. But that letter was an example and insight into her subjectivity, if you like, but, you know, it's few and far between those sorts of first-hand accounts.

Wow. Kesh, have you made of this woman? lie. From what Joan's saying, it's making me think about, this phrase goes to my mind a lot, the idea of the unspeakable things left unspoken, even though there are letters, right? Even though we have, there's some information about what she would have thought and said, even that would have come through the cult of true womanhood, right? And so there are things that she wouldn't have said, given her position at that time. And it wouldn't have been an outlet for really seeing what she really would have wanted to express potentially. And so there's so much of, you know, the need to kind of

read between the lines in people's writing from that time, that really makes me think so much about all of the unspeakable things that are still left unspoken. Could you tell me a little bit about Fannie Eton, the pre-Raphaelite model? She's someone that has absolutely fascinated me for years, and I know so little about her. She was one of the models that they used, wasn't she? She's an absolutely crucial, important figure. And Jan Marsh, a great historian, and Van Aitin's family have done further research into her life. But we really wanted to centralise her in the book for her incredible story, really. And again, she takes us into a different realm of art and culture.

So she was born in Jamaica. She comes over to the UK in the 1830s. And she's living in London. She works as a servant. And it's while she's in London that she meets a kind of up-and-coming pre-Raphaelite artist, Simeon Solomon. And he's drawn to her and he sketches her and introduces her to the Royal Academy. And so she goes into the Royal Academy and is sketched by a range of different artists. And so by this time, she's cohabiting with a man. She's got, I think it's about nine children

in total. And she's in this sort of cultural centre, if you like, of high Victorian art. And she's being painted and sketched. And then she ultimately set up. was in the Isle of White and lives into the 20th century. That's so random, isn't it? Just when you said that, it's just, oh, she went to the Royal Academy. She was painted by the pre-Raphylites. And then she went to the Isle of White. Oh, but I think that what transfixes me about her in particular is that it's that thing again,

like you were saying, that Keisha, is that you can't get to their voices. There's these amazing images of her, and she's so beautiful, and her face looks so kind of, it's just so much emotion in it. But I don't know what she thinks. She's still being drawn by someone else constructed through someone else, through a white man's art, I suppose. And it's kind of, I want to get at her. And I want to, like, you know, what were her thoughts and feelings about this?

How did she experience that? But I think that the records of her are really profound. She looks so beautiful in these images. I'm just looking at some now. Yeah, yeah, beautiful. And at the same time, in the images where her eyes are open, I keep thinking like, what else is happening in there, right? What are you thinking about in this moment?

What was going through her mind if she's posing for this work and hearing the things that were being said around her about her as she's being asked to move in different ways, you know? What kind of conversations are going on in these spaces? Is there any records of her words, letters or diaries or just these amazing images that we're still not sure what she was thinking? Yeah, just these amazing images. And I think one of the things that we tried to do with her story

was imbue her with some agency as well. You know, she's often referred to as a pre-Raphafielite muse. But obviously in the creation of artwork, the model has an important role to play within that as well. And so being clear that she wasn't just sort of a passive agent in the creation of art, but she was a central and important figure in that. And she was a mother trying to do best by her family and her children. And, you know, it's quite incredible that these amazing paintings still exist today, which is testament to Eaton.

It's very easy to look back at the history of an experience of black people in Victorian England and America and rightfully acknowledged the horrors and the tragedy and the discrimination that they must have, that they did face. But was there anything that came out of your research that you weren't expecting? I was because I was obviously based in the UK during the research of this. And one of the things that really surprised me, I'd gone to the Sutton Archives in London. I was researching George Rice, who was born in America, studied at Edinburgh University Medicine, and became a house physician. It was very well paid, had a family.

And I'd gone to look at his sort of personal papers. And there were a few letters there. There were sort of bills for groceries that he'd bought, revealing kind of a sweet tooth and a generous disposition. And there was some photos of him and medical staff outside an institution that he worked for. And you could see, you know, George Rice sitting at the front amongst a sea of white faces.

And yet at the back, looking really close, there was also a black nurse in this photograph. And it really struck me and I said to the archivist, do we know anything about this black nurse? We couldn't find anything on her. But it was kind of at that moment, and this was in early stages of research where I was like, wow, you know,

there's a much greater presence here. And those visual archives help illuminate that presence. And that for me was a sort of personal moment of like, right, this is where we've got to explore more deeply. Wow. Well, what about you, Keshire? What came out of the research that perhaps you weren't expecting to find? Well, I think for me, the process of this was so different from anything I've done before

in the sense of John, you know, had done a lot of the archival work and done a lot of the research already when we began talking about this project. And so this was a revelation for me, just really being able to understand how far back there were archives to kind of begin to establish the presence of black people in the UK and then the ability to kind of string these lives together in a way. So I remember very early on, I'm really kind of fascinated by the story of Cheddar Man and these remains that get found and kind of thinking about,

you know, how do we then kind of recognize the length of this history, you know, like literally how far we're talking about 10,000 years ago. Could you tell us a little bit about Cheddar Man just for anyone that's listening and going, who's that? Yeah, so Cheddar Man, he was from the Mesolithic era, a hunter-gatherer, and he was discovered in the Edwardian era in the Mendep Hills, Somerset, his skeleton. And there was lots of sort of DNA analysis done on his skeleton to get a sense of what he might

have looked like. And it was revealed that he had the skin pigmentation similar to someone from sub-Saharan Africa. So he had dark skin, dark brown hair and blue eyes. And it was just one of those moments. And, you know, this was a relatively recent discovery with this DNA sequencing that an enabled this reconstruction of Cheddar Man. And it was one of those moments, I think, where it really made people reconsider what they

understood as the sort of visual images of Britain in the past. You know, we tend to think just white, whereas Cheddar Man was actually a prime example of someone who complicated that imagining of our past. And, you know, again, lots of historians have done some fascinating work and important work on charting the black presence prior to the 19. century, you know, from the first century in the Roman era, all the way up to the 18th century and then beyond. And I think this idea that the Black British presence began with the Windrush generation is so flawed and so misguided. And so this kind of history work is so important

to kind of make the claim, which we tried to make in our book, that British history and black history aren't these two separate domains. You know, they're one and the same. They're interwoven. And I think it was kind of from that thesis, if you like, that we really tried to drive home the point in the book. And it's not the case that if you go back to the archives, you might be able to find one or two examples of people that were black. I mean, there was a substantial number of people living in the UK who were black. And you can find that if you go back to the medieval period. Certainly, Queen Elizabeth's court had a lot to say about it at the time. They were writing about these numbers of people in Britain.

and when you actually start to look for it, they're there in quite embarrassingly large quantities to consider that we have this ridiculous idea that Britain was white and has been since dayd up. It's completely false. Absolutely. And by the late 18th century, it's been estimated that there were sort of 10 to 20,000 black people in Britain.

And many of those people, you know, they married and had children who married and had children, assimilating into Britain. And so, yeah, I think it's hard. high time that we see history in its totality and set right some of those wrongs. Absolutely. I mean, I think a lot about that fallacy that you pointed out, down about the idea that the Windmatch Generation happened and then like suddenly you have all these black around people in the UK, you know. And in my mind,

it was always this thing of like the way that that was being taught. It's like there's nobody and then suddenly, you know, there's this presence. And it's just absolutely false. You know, the idea that England couldn't have existed, the way that it has existed, right? There's so many of the things that exist there, the way that they exist, could not have existed there without black presence there at the same time. And this history is particularly important because there is a narrative that emerges from far right groups about a kind of a white, medieval Saxon history. The idea that there was a kind of a period of time when we were all white and we were kind of, and that is used and appropriated by far right racist groups to try and make various cases for racial purity. so this work to sort of make the point that, well, no, no. It's so important.

It has such a huge bearing on debates and discussions and narratives today, doesn't it? Yeah, 100%. And I think that was one reason why cheddar man was so discombobulating. It really fucked people up, didn't it? Like, really people. Just watching people's heads explode was just wonderful. And I think as well for us, you know, we weren't really approaching this even from a political point. I mean, you could argue the history that we've received through the ages as kind of political in and of itself.

But for us, it was also about just telling history and being honest with that history, with a particular focus on, as I've said, you know, the complete unity between British history and black history, not being separate domains and telling history as it was. I wasn't taught that in school. My history in school was the sort of the history of white kings and queens. I didn't hear this history at all. So I suppose that's something I'm not sure what's taught in the school curriculum. now, but what would you guys like to see going forward? How can we redress this and sort of start telling the history, as you said, in its full glory? Yeah, I think that's for me, a lot of what drives this work. It's how do we reshape the future through the education that we offer now, right?

I remember first coming to England, probably in the early 90s and going to visit schools and, you know, having to manage my surprise at the lack of engagement with any aspects of black history at all. And I don't know why I expected anything different. You know, I grew up pretty much in the U.S. where we didn't have that either. But it's been so clear that there is this very kind of white version, even, you know, I do a lot of work in international education. And so the idea people have if they're going to study abroad in England

is that they're coming to a white place. And so much of this is saying, no, we have to be honest about our histories. We have to be aware of what really shape the making of these nations. And also understand that we're not talking about kind of filling in the gaps of history. We're not saying, you know, that like black folks who like magical glue, you know, bringing cultures or anything together. But much more that these are whole people with whole lives, families, networks, complicated engagements with folks, with their communities. And that, you know, it's just as important to understand the history of black people

in England with a sense of full agency, with a sense of full humanity as it is everyone else. You know, these statues that we have, I think a lot about kind of the images that even in the statues that we have that are starting to show up, even in the UK. It's a beautiful statue that was recently done of Mary Siko, who's not in the book specifically, but, you know, one of these kind of figures. But then the image of her face, when I look at her face, I'm like, I don't know if those are really her features, right? And so then the next generation of scholars, the next generation of people who begin to really have more access to this material may start to then reflect a greater sense of humanity. and agency and understanding and appreciation for the beauty that is black and brown culture that's amazing. It's amazing. So in the course, this is a really unfair question and I hate it when people put this question to me because it's like, who's your favorite child? But of all the case

studies that you've done in your research, the ones that made it in the book and the ones that didn't make it into the book, was there anyone in particular that you were just like, oh, this person is just amazing. Oh, well, for me personally, Pablo Fankwe has got to be up there. Now that's a name, Pablo Fanque. Pablo Fanque, born William Darby in a workhouse in Norwich in 1810, came from a poor family, born into a workhouse, escaped the horrors of the workhouse to train in the realm of the circus. And he learned acrobatic skills, equestrianism,

and was trained by some of the great circus performers of his age. And then in 1841, he decides to go into business alone. And so he sets up his own circus outfit. By the mid-19th century, he's filling amphitheaters of about 3,000. He travels the breadth of the UK. And he brings a real kind of respectability to the circus and his praise both for the way he runs his circus, how he treats the people that worked for him.

And as a result, you know, the circus at the time was initially seen as quite a lowly form of entertainment. But he really helps to popularize it and imbue it with a level of respectability. and he was actually posthumously recognised in the Beatles song for the benefit of Mr. Kite. No. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So, yeah, kind of unwittingly at the time, but one of his posters that were advertising his circuses was picked up by John Lennon, and it formed the basis of lyrics for that song.

And so he was a fascinating character, and, you know, David Olusogo and others have written about him. And what's so fascinating about him is how he opens up this other world of entertainment. So he's a personal favourite of mine anyway. Like, why don't I know that history? Why do I know loads about Charles Flipping Dickens? And I don't know about Pablo Fanute. That's just an incredible history. And I'm going to go and read more about him.

What about you, Keshow? Who is, if I had to make you pick someone from your research, who'd be your standout? Oh, gosh, I've got to go with the hard question, Kate. It's mean, isn't it? It's mean. I can't say everyone, huh? So let's say, I think it's a thing. the black feminist. They're all my favorites, but this one's a bit more favorite than the others.

I think the story of Sarah Parker Raymond, really. I'm so intrigued by kind of early feminisms, early black feminisms in particular, and how women, like her in particular, kind of, were able to ride this fine line of respectability politics and at the same time saying really controversial things at the time, really kind of making the case for the intersection between abolition and women's rights and understanding the particular position that I put black women in. I just think she's amazing. And I think, you know, we hear a lot about Anna Julia Cooper of Ways from the South and, you know, other people who were kind of connected in this era. But we haven't really, I think, seen so much kind of attention to Sarah Parker Raymond in the way that needs to

happen. And was she an activist? Was she fighting against segregation? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. See, again, why don't I know her name? I should know her name. That's why this book is so, so important and just wonderful and a revelation and much, much needed. But if people want to know more about you and more about your book, where can they find you? Twitter. You can't go wrong with you. You've got Twitter.

Or you can go very wrong with Twitter. Or you can pick up our book in all good bookstores, we hope. Give me the full title of it so people can run, run to the bookstore to get it. It's Black Victorians Hidden in History. John and Kesha thank you so much for joining me you have just been amazing to talk to thank you thank you so much thank you so much for listening

and thank you to Kesha and John for all the research that you do and for taking the time to come and share it with us today and if you like what you've heard please don't forget to like review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts join me again betwixt the sheets the history of sex scandal in society a podcast by History Hit

This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.