Dan Snow's History Hit - Charles Ignatius Sancho: From Slavery to High Society

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

Please note that this episode contains discussion of racist language.Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in what was known as the Middle Passage. He was soon orphaned and then brought to England, where he was enslaved in Greenwich, London, by three sisters who opposed any attempt at education. So how did Charles Ignatius Sancho later go on to meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery?Paterson Joseph is an actor and writer. Paterson joins Dan on the podcast to share Sancho’s extraordinary story— ​​one that begins on a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean, and ends at the very centre of London life.This episode was produced by Hannah Ward, the audio editor was Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.Complete the survey and you'll be entered into a prize draw to win 5 Historical Non-Fiction Books- including a signed copy of Dan Snow's 'On This Day in History'.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History here. I am super excited on this podcast. I'm talking to an actor that I've admired for years. He's very brilliant and he starred in many hits on stage and screen in the UK and the US, perhaps particularly famous for his brilliant role in Peep Show. He's Patterson Joseph. He's of Afro-Caribbean descent and he's become obsessed over his life with another British member of the African diaspora, Charles Ignatius Sancho, with another British member of the African diaspora, Charles Ignatius Sancho, who lived in Britain in the second half of the 18th century. Now, you know, I get a lot of actors on the podcast. They've done their research about characters they're playing or writing about, but honestly, none of them have demonstrated their erudition as a historian as much as

Parson Joseph, as you will hear. This guy lives, eats, breathes Sancho and Mean Streets of 18th Century London. If you're interested in the 18th century in any way, this is going to be a real treat for you. You've got to check out his book, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho. It is a beautiful book and I've got him on the podcast talking to me about all the research that went in to writing that fictional but deeply embedded in history book. Enjoy. Patton, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. What a pleasure. Thank you, Dan. It's great having you. Talking about one of the most fascinating characters of the 18th century.

Now, saying something, tell me about Charles Ignatius Sancho. Well, Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship, as far as we know, in 1729, brought to England after his parents both died when he was three years old. From Columbia, he was sent to Greenwich. He lived with three spinster sisters whose names are obscured to us. Sancho never mentioned them. And then eventually, after being a sort of pet with them until he was about 15, 18 maybe, He leaves them having made friends with the Duke of Montague who found him one day in Blackheath when he was about seven, educated him secretly. He becomes a musician and a valet to the Duke of Montague, the later Duke of Montague, George, and the butler to the Duchess, and then a musician. And also at the end of his life,

when he was given an annuity, a shopkeeper in Westminster on Charles Street, just next to Downing Street. So it meant that he could vote, because as long as you could own property, you could vote. First of all, conditions on those slave ships were the worst imaginable. And to go through labour and give birth on one, and for that child to survive, like, that's extraordinary. Yes, but I mean, you know, they just threw them on, didn't they? They were like cattle. So then they've been hanging around, you know, in a slave hole in Ghana or whatever. Somebody's bound to be pregnant. They would have been pregnant when they were captured, perhaps, or they were with their husband and they became pregnant. So yeah,

there's plenty of that going on. We don't hear a lot about it, of course, a lot of the details about it. And you also must remember, Dan, that I'm doing a bit of what the American author, so dear Hartman, calls critical fabulation, which is the act of looking in the archive, which is pretty threadbare when it comes to African stories in the West, and trying to piece together through other black people who are in similar situations,

what might have happened, what's the most likely scenario. And that's what I've done really with the novel. It's an imaginatively, because we do not have that archive material. How does an orphan child in the West Indies, in Columbia, in fact, make it back to England in Greenwich? Yeah, so we're talking about 1734 or thereabouts. And his owner, according to the biographer of his letters, he wrote these very famous letters that came out a couple of years

after he died in 1782. And Jekyll, Joseph Jekyll, who's the biographer, he says that his owner then took him to England. So, I mean, there's many questions you could ask. I make my decision imaginatively and just say there was a feeling of guilt in that master and he thought he'll be better off with these three spinsters. Maybe he was a product of that master that happened plenty of times and so black enslaved african people could remain in that condition even in the uk in the early 18th century in the early to mid-18th century he would have been a child slave to these sisters in greenwich we think yeah that was his status nobody would ever have said it out loud because there was a predominant feeling that we didn't have slavery on the brit Isles. Even at that time, people thought that was happening remotely. But their status was that of shackle. I mean,

they didn't have any kind of freedom. They had no rights. They could own no property. They could do nothing. They couldn't even work in the city because I guess whoever was in charge of that, the mayor, I don't know, declared that there would be no Negro apprentices. They couldn't be. So you couldn't even get a legitimate work. But there were plenty of black people in London. So what were they doing? That's the mystery, because the historical record is, as I said, incredibly threadbare.

Perhaps like many subsequent mayors of London, their injunctions have been ignored widely. People snuck behind all of that. I mean, you know, the Jewish populace had an awful time from the late 13th century and they were still here. It doesn't mean that they went away. They just went underground. so people lived their lives people do don't they in extreme circumstances and carry on regardless and then as often happens young men get less attractive when

they go through puberty and so there's a sense that he was sort of just chucked out when he lost his sort of novelty value as a young household attendant? Well, just meditate on that for a second. You think you've got the absolute right over a child. Most human beings don't abuse children, but some do. And so, you know, there he is, and he's the age of 12, 13, comes into puberty. What happens then? You've been the pet, you've been, you know, warming the bed, perhaps, of your mistress, not in a sexual way, but just sort. But there is. And a lot of these kids, when they became adolescents, were thrown out. A lot of the girls were thrown out, obviously, because the mistresses of the house feared and often saw that there was a sexual element to that

relationship. And they were chucked out on the streets, obviously becoming prostitutes. Black Harriet, who had a brothel in town, was a very well-known prostitute. Obviously, most of her girls were from Africa or the West Indies, brought here as kids and then chucked out when they started to grow breasts and have periods and become women, likewise with the men. And if we just imagine what that was like, that you had absolute impunity, there's nothing anybody could have done. There was no redress for these children. We see what happens now when people are under the authority of somebody who's going to be abusive. There's nothing much a child can do about that, especially a black child.

So even if we just imagine it, it was a pretty precarious existence for black children in England in the 18th century. But Sancho had managed to form a relationship with this duke whilst in their house, and they were both fascinated by knowledge and reading. And so somehow this young boy had built himself quite a good safety net, I guess. As I say in the preface, this is the story of a lucky African orphan because he runs away from the sisters because they wouldn't teach him how to read. He's found in Blackheath Park nearby by the Duke of Montague. Even that, just found, like just by accident. And then he found him a witty child who took him home and looked after

him and then took him back to the ladies who wouldn't teach him to read. And so he did it secretly. I find that story fascinating in and of itself, but the Duke of Montague had form. John Duke of Montague was an extraordinary advocate for African intelligence, which sounds like a silly thing to say now, but of course, back in the day, some people thought that black people didn't have the intellectual capacity to do what the Europeans were doing. So he always thought that. He rescued a guy called Joe Ben Solomon. There's a large tract called The Life of Joe Ben Solomon, son of the High Priest of Bunda, who was a slave in Maryland for two years and afterwards was brought back to England in 1734, which I say

is a trippingly great title on the tongue. But that's what he did there. He rescued a guy called Francis Williams, a Jamaican scholar. So there is form. He got doubly lucky, found by a kindly man, but also found by a duke who really believed in African intelligence. And away he went. And then really became a kind of unofficial ward to that family until he was 19 and made butler to the widow, the Duchess of Montague. And his life was erratic, but he was certainly helped by them.

They're an incredibly important family in his life. But he was painted by Gainsborough. So during his lifetime, he achieved sort of notoriety. Is that because of his connection with this grand family or because of what he was also doing, cutting quite a dash around London? What's going on here? Yeah, I mean, the portrait was painted in 100 minutes in Bath in 1768. Gainsborough was a whiz with the brush, wasn't he?

Obviously sponsored by the Montagues. And they decided that he was obviously important enough to them to have his portrait painted, because other servants had their portraits painted too. But what was special about him was that he was well known outside the circle of even that family, because he was a musician already. He was also just a figure around town. He was quite grand, a little bit vain. So he was known, especially for his sort of wit around town. You know quite grand, a little bit vain. So he was known, especially for his sort of wit around town. You know, if somebody approached him and insulted him, a couple of fellows apparently came up and sort of insulted him by saying, smoke Othello. And he's apparently stepped in front of

them and patted his big round paunch and said, I, sirs, such Othellos you meet with, but once in a century, such a Yagos as you, we meet within every dirty passage, proceeds us. You know, man about town, with his rapier wit, cut people down. So that, I think, was why that portrait is taken with such care. Of course, Gainsborough didn't have to paint him so lavishly. He could have, you know, done a job. He's just a servant. He's a valet.

When you look at the lavishness of the waistcoat and the gold buttons and the way his cravat is perfectly done, his hair perfectly coiffured, of course, he learned hairdressing to be a valet. When you look at the lavishness of the waistcoat and the gold buttons and the way his cravat is perfectly done, his hair perfectly coiffured, of course he learned hairdressing to be a valet. It's an extraordinary portrait. And that's what caught my attention, actually. I couldn't quite believe it. I thought originally that it was a Hogarth testiche. He put black figures in a lot of his prints. But no, it turns out his story is as extraordinary as it sounds. So yeah, it was a no-brainer for an actor to play somebody who had so many aspects. I have met many Iagos in dirty pastures in my time, so it's interesting to hear they were still around in the 18th century.

Also, abolitionism is a gigantic popular movement at this point. It's growing. Yeah, it's growing. People like Thomas Clarkson started to get involved, the great heroes, Granville Sharp and his family. People superseded by Wilberforce, but actually Wilberforce was a Johnny-come-lately. I'm grateful for him, but Johnny-come-lately to the cause. And women were the first really to take it up, and Quakers obviously initially, refusing to buy sugar and slave goods. But he was a icon. Look what black people could achieve if they were given education.

And I think he slightly resisted it. I always feel that he would slightly resist that poster boy, but he was an exception and he made himself known by writing to the newspapers. Of course, that was another thing that he was well known for, for writing. I think his letters published in the newspapers and his correspondence with Lawrence Stern came out in around 1768. Yeah, about the time the portrait was painted. And somebody published that just after Stern's death, and that put him on the map. His first line to Stern in that letter is, Sir, I am one of those whom the vulgar and illiberal call niggers. Yes, he used that word. And he uses those words very carefully. Very rarely says it, but he says it for power. He says it for effect. And he knows that Stern's half on side because he's been writing about that already.

And they have a wonderful correspondence for a couple of years, rather beautiful. And then Stern tells him that when he received his letters, he was in his parsonage and he was just about to write a chapter on a Negro girl who wouldn't harm a housefly, even though those of her own species were determined to destroy her. It's such a beautiful coincidence that Stern was already thinking, I wonder if I have the right to write this. And then here comes this letter to say, please support my black brothers and sisters in chains. And there it is. It's right in the middle of Tristram Shandy. This Negro girl just pops up and her description is so poignant and moving and powerful, really. So Sancho had a hand, I suppose, in that.

poignant and moving and powerful, really. So Sancho had a hand, I suppose, in that. If you listen to Dan Snow's history hit, I've talked about the remarkable life of Charles Ignatius Sancho more coming up. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history.

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wherever you get your podcasts. What was Sancho's role within the abolition movement, would you say? I don't think the movement was a movement until much later. It became a thing that a lot of people were getting on board with. So it was only when stories started coming out of the Caribbean and people realised what was happening that there was a sort of movement. And that took a long time. I would have said in the 1770s, it was just burgeoning. So are his letters and observations and witticisms part of a sort of general awakening? He was just trying to be a guy. He's addressing what he knows is the most important issue to the people that look like him and come from where he's come from. But he talks about art.

He talks about the American Revolution. He's a monarchist. He's not a revolutionary. He's not Equiano who started the Sons of Africa with Grigno Sour and the others. He hasn't been to the Caribbean. He was free when he left it. He never went back. Didn't go anywhere else, far as he went was Scotland. So he feels himself to be a British man, literally just expressing himself and an abolitionist, but not a drum beater. He just wants people to listen in reason to how irrational and barbaric this practice is.

But in a way, that's a precursor to The Awakening, isn't it? It's establishing their personhood. It sounds bizarre, but even as an actor, which is obviously my day job, I wanted to do the classics. And so I want to be a human being doing this story. I'm playing the King of Norway. I know some people find this incongruous, but I'm pulling it off. I'm playing Mr. Worthy in the recruiting office. Some people are bulking at that, but I'm putting it off. So for me, it was like, acknowledge my humanity first, so you can deal with the politics afterwards. And his letter to Stern literally says that. He says, humanity, humanity must comply. And it's

almost as if he's calling to the empathy of the nation that he's adopted in to say, think for 10 seconds what it would be like if this were you. And that's, to me, is a very beautiful and simple way to try to get people to connect with the issues that you have around you as a black person or as anybody who's isolated, depressed, or in any way persecuted for who they are. That reminds me, you mentioned your acting career. One of my favourite moments of your illustrious career

was when you were in Peep Show. And that was a very interesting role for a person of colour because the two white layabout idiots would get annoyed by your blackness and say that they were more black than you because they were like counter-cultural and you were like talking about your APR and your credit cards and stuff. I thought that was really interesting. I love that we're talking about Pete's show on a history podcast. I mean, I think that when Sam and Jesse wrote this, I'm not sure that they necessarily went, oh, we'll just get this black guy and it'll be really awkward. I

think they got me in and then went, oh, let's make something of this. I happened to have a moustache because I was playing Othello up at the Royal Exchange in Manchester when I was filming it. And so they wrote a bit in when Mark was trying to grow a moustache like Johnson. What I loved about it was Johnson has very high status. So even though there was an edginess to it, you know, when he discovers that they've been looking at pornographic DVD and I discover that and I become very awkward. It didn't feel in any way that I was disparaging my ethnicity. It also felt that these guys are witty enough and smart enough not to have done that. So that sort of works, that sort of balance works.

You could do all sorts of mockery if everybody feels empowered within it. Why did you feel that this was a story that you wanted to devote 20 years of your life to researching? I thought I'd do it in about five years. I mean, I hadn't been writing, I'd been writing privately, but never publicly. And I thought, I'm the only one who can write this because I'm the only one who got this thing in my head. So I thought it would probably take me five years to get it all done. But it just

became more and more obsessive because Sancho seems to be this sort of catalyst. He seems to be this sort of hub around which so much of 18th century England sort of changed. And he saw those changes. It was part of those changes, even things like establishing a British museum. It happened at Montague House in Bloomsbury. To me, the fact that he's got these fingers in all these strange pies, Garrick, you know, the theatre crowd, the way that was changing and moving and becoming sort of more realistic and the politics of the time. He was involved. He was in there. I just got fascinated by the peripheral world around him too. And if you read the novel, yes, it's about his life, but it's also about his observations and what was

happening around him. The Irish poor, he was treated appallingly because of their papist leanings. There was the women's story. There was the story of the black poor, sure, but also of every other level of society. He seems to be the one who could straddle high society in terms of monarchy. He was working for somebody who worked for the royal family after all. And he 18th century England, which you know, is kind of when England changed the most, right? It seemed to me the period where things were established, particularly when the Enlightenment came in, that made England a power, not just colonial power, but somehow intellectual, artistic. We must have British art. We're always going to the continent. We must have British art. So there was a kind of identity that was being built about who we are as Britons. And I feel like he's right in the middle of that. So that's why I think I've been lost in it. Because you do

get lost in periods because they're infinitely fascinating, I think. I can't share everyone's email, but your email, which you've had for years, is Sancho. And it must have been wonderful finally doing a solo play, you know, which you wrote, and then you also performed. I mean, that must have been such a climax that project yeah it really was i mean there's a whole story around the vanity which i started the project you know i do make a joke about it the place i wrote this because i want to be in a costume damn right by the way 18th century male fashion is just kick-ass oh it's out of this world isn't it oh well anyway we can get into that but i mean i feel like it was just a one of those things where you as a black person living in london and feeling the life i lived you know

half of it was spent basically fighting people who wanted you to go home and the other half spent going how am i establishing myself here this is my home i don't know i'm not answering your question but that's why i love batman so much and why i think my career if you like sort of skewed into this writing well i'm shocked and saddened to hear that you spent half your time fighting people that wanted to go home. Do you think the next generation, it's as intense for them? Or because of the work that Sancho and then other pioneers like you and generations of people have done?

This is the work I'm trying to do because I don't think so. I don't think that they quite know whether they are, if they come from the African continent or if they're British. And if British means the same as English. And then you've got the Caribbeans who often relate to the Caribbean, but many of them would be very strange there. They would be seen as British. And then there's the American culture, which is like a Death Star culture, which a lot of black British people and people around the world, black people around the world relate to. So I was worried about that for the next generation, my son's generation and beyond, that you don't know who you are. You can't say

you're American. Yes, you can wear the clothes and listen to the music, but that's not your history, not at all. And you're not African if you've been here all your life and this is your culture. So there is, and still it's an ongoing thing about place and belonging. I mean, am I not English? I would never say that you see, but am I not English? Well, I was born in this country. I didn't leave it until I was 15 for a day trip to Holland. The only time I went to the New York was 32. What am I? I've got to be something. I only know this. My culture is this. My fluent language is this. So what can I be apart from English? See, I wasn't born in Scotland. I wasn't born in Ireland or Wales. I was born in England. But for me to say I'm English, I can feel a frisson both in me and in the person I'm speaking to going, is that right? Can that be

right? Is English an ethnicity or is it a nationality? Is British an ethnicity? No, it's not. British is a nationality. But what's my ethnicity? African Caribbean British. I mean, it's sort of complicated, but I'm English, aren't I? By every other definition of the word, somebody born in a country, raised in a country, educated in a country, to adulthood, surely they are an American or a French person. So this is what we're trying to tackle, I suppose, is our own identity, but also for the nation to know who these people are. They're not strangers. We've been here since, I don't know, Roman Britain, if you look at Septimius Severus. We need to talk about it and talk about it calmly and like a family and go, what's going on here? Because we've been told

some very garbled stories over the years, I think. Well, thank you for doing what you're doing. Thank you for talking to me about it. Pleasure. And I think if a measure of ethnicity is knowing more about that nation's history than anybody else, then you're doubly English. So thank you very much for coming on and tell us about how people can engage more with your work on Charles Ignatius Sancho. Oh, well oh well i mean anybody who just clicks on ignatius underscore sancho on twitter will find me or just find me and there'll be lots of stuff and things that will lead you to books and other things that i've done so that was very nice indeed thank you for coming talking to me all about it thanks dan pleasure cheers man Pleasure. Cheers, man.