Noble Blood - The Queen's Goddaughter

Episode Date: January 18, 2022

When Sarah Forbes Bonetta was seven years old, she was enslaved in the African kingdom of Dahomey and presented as a gift to a visiting British naval captain. The captain brought her to London in order to "rescue" her. The young girl would soon become the goddaughter to the most powerful woman in the world: Queen Victoria.Support Noble Blood:— Bonus episodes and scripts on Patreon— Merch!— Order Dana's book, Anatomy: A Love Story— Sign up to join Dana on the Mary Shelley Pilgrimage in April Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. This Financial Literacy Month, we are talking about the one investment most people ignore, building a business around the life you actually want. It was just us, making happen whatever he said was going to happen, and then it happened. On Those Amigos, entrepreneurs like America Sam and Joe Huff, get real about money, taking risk, and while your dream might be the smartest move. At the end of my life, what am I really going to care about?

And the conclusion I came to is what I did to make the world a better place in whatever way. Listen to those amigos on the I-HartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHart Radio and Grimmin Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. One quick note before we begin. Today is the day my book, Anatomy a Love Story, is finally available in bookstores everywhere. I worked so hard on it.

If you're a fan of Noble Blood, I really think you're going to like it. It's a story about grave robbers and surgery in 19th century, Edinburgh. There is a slight nobility tie to it. It's basically an episode of Noble Blood, except 25 times longer, made up, and you have to read words on a page unless you get the audiobook. But it would mean the world to me if you're interested or you're a fan of this podcast, if you went to your local indie bookstore and picked up a copy. And as always, thank you so much for listening to the show.

and for your support on the Patreon and everything you do to make the show happen. It was 1850, and Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was holding court at Windsor Palace, waiting to receive a very special guest, a young girl who was arriving by boat from the western coast of Africa. Victoria had been queen for 13 years by this point, and though she was only 31 years old, she was already mother to seven children, all seven of which were born without anesthesia for the record. Chloriform would be introduced for her eighth child's birth in 1853,

and she would find the experience such a relief that she would go on to have a ninth child. As a young female monarch, a mother and wife, Victoria represented a new era for the British Empire. an age that was celebrated as civility incarnate. Her reign began just a few years after Parliament banned slavery throughout the empire, a further expansion of the law prohibiting the slave trade that they had passed a few decades earlier. Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, was an outspoken opponent of slavery,

and so the early years of Queen Victoria's reign were an optimistic moment for Great Britain, one of self-satisfied idealism and notions of their own enlightenment, especially when British citizens could compare themselves to the Americans across the Atlantic. In America, 1850 was the year that Congress passed the second fugitive slave act, a cruel and draconian law that allowed the seizure and return of enslaved people even after they had arrived in a free territory, a northern state where slavery would be illegal. This new law would allow someone to capture anyone they might suspect

of being a runaway slave and bring them in front of local officials who were deputized to decide without a jury trial the status of whether or not that kidnapped person was or was not the property of the white person who claimed them. 1850 was the year. Harriet Beecher Stowe would begin writing her best-selling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, of which he would send a copy to the royal palace, writing a letter to Prince Albert,

praising his abolitionist sensibilities. Queen Victoria was such a fan of Stowe, and she found herself so emotionally affected by her book, that the queen would eventually flout diplomatic protocol in order to meet her. But the larger issues of race in Victorian Britain were more common. complicated and nuance, than it might appear from the incredibly belated and self-congratulatory progress made to free the people throughout the realm whom they had enslaved in the first place. In 1877, Victoria would become Empress of India. She would be the face used to legitimize colonialism under the guise of civility, the woman who would be

known globally as the Great White Queen. In the words of historian David Olusoga in his book Black and British, a forgotten history, Victoria was a, quote, cipher for British power. Colonialism was framed as expanding the gift of, quote-unquote, civilization, and Christianity. And by the middle of the 1800s, those in power in Great Britain were eager to justify their own efforts, to other nations around the world, but also to themselves. To that end, success stories were needed, narratives that fueled into their preconceived notions of their own virtue. Which brings us to Queen Victoria's special visitor at Windsor Castle November 9, 1850.

It was a young girl, seven or eight years old, taking small steps in the large, echoing hallway. She was taught what to do when she reached the queen, which was to dip into a low curtsy. After she rose, the young girl looked over her shoulder at the man who had brought her here, a captain named Frederick E. Forbes. The young girl was black. Captain Forbes had, quote unquote, rescued her from where she was enslaved in the palace of the African Kingdom of Daomi and presented as a gift to the English.

Captain Forbes baptized her with the name Sarah Forbes. Bonetta, Forbes after himself, and Bonetta, her surname, after the boat on which they sailed back to England together. During the voyage, Sarah learned English, astonishing Captain Forbes and the crew with how intelligent she was. He wrote to Queen Victoria to let her know about the unexpected passenger joining them on the return trip, and to his surprise, word came from Queen Victoria that she intended to adopt and care for the girl, to act as her godmother. On November 9th, Sarah Forbes Bonnetta met her royal godmother in person for the first time. Queen Victoria, who famously stood only five feet tall, was probably about the same size as her.

Even still, we can't imagine how terrified Sarah Bonetta must have been. Here was a girl whose life had been destroyed, whose family had been murdered by a rival kingdom, who was captured and enslaved only to be handed off like dry goods to a stranger, baptized in a new religion, forced to learn a new language as quickly as she could so that she could be presented to the most powerful woman in the world for her approval. Sarah Bonetta, whom the queen would soon nickname Sally, would spend the rest of her life as a fixture of royal courtly life. She would be a regular guest at palaces around England, she would attend royal events and have her education fully funded. Her children would also be

godchildren of the queen, and her grandchildren would continue to benefit from Victoria financially for their entire lives. That relationship, the story of the black, formerly enslaved girl being effectively adopted by Queen Victoria is why Sarah Forbes Benetta is famous and why we know her story today. In her book, Infamous Bodies, author Samantha Pinto writes, quote, Bonetta's proximity to the sovereign

gave her access to the emerging mass media technologies that appended royalty and also gave her and us access to her image via the Royal Archive, end quote. We have photos of Sarah Bonnetta, because she had access to the famous photographers of the day. There are newspaper articles about her that we can read

because she was considered a curiosity, a Cinderella story. To modern audiences, her photographs in which Bonetta is wearing elaborate Victorian dress are sometimes paraded out under clickbait headlines akin to, wow, you'll never believe who this woman's godmother was. Akin to that, or in the case of BuzzFeed, exactly like that. As Samantha Pinto writes, quote, These fashions and this era have been so associated with whiteness that their encounter with Bonetta's flesh piques immediate contemporary interest,

as if Bonetta's skin and the fashion are so incongruous in their proximity that the image demands explanation and explication, end quote. It reminds me a little bit of an episode of Doctor Who, in which the doctor, played by Peter Capaldi at this point, visits Regency-era England to see the freezing of the Thames. His new companion, Bill, remarks that the London population is, quote, bit more black than they show in the movies. The doctor responds,

So is Jesus. History is a whitewash. In recent years, there's been an effort by the British public to draw more attention to Seraveneta's life. The British Heritage commissioned a portrait of her by the artist Hannah Ozar, one of a series of, quote, previously overlooked black figures from British history. But Sarah's fame is a complicated paradox in a way. The very reason Sarah is famous and the reason we have information about her life is because of her forced participation in a power structure that absorbed her individual agency. We know almost nothing about who she actually was as a

person. Samantha Pinto continued to write, quote, Bonetta is a uniquely blank canvas of black agency, as she doesn't author any significant text or performance. Instead, she persists almost entirely through the images of her Cart de Visite photographs, as well as in some letters, histories, and news report where it is her unlikely proximity to British royalty that marks her as of public interest. end quote. All we can do now is squint and look at the photographs of the beautiful girl in the giant hoop Victorian dress, and remember that before she was a symbol, she was a real person.

I'm Danish Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. For about 300 years, beginning in the 1600s, Daomi was an African kingdom that existed on the western coast of Africa, within present-day Benin. Originally, Daomi was a tributary kingdom to the Oyo Empire, which extended through present-day Nigeria, but Daomi eventually became an independent and conquering power. Their rise in power was thanks to a few factors,

an incredibly brutal expansionist approach to conquering neighboring kingdoms, a disciplined military which included an all-female unit, and finally, and perhaps most importantly, a willingness to engage with the Atlantic slave trade. The Daomi Kingdom was one of the largest suppliers of the Atlantic slave trade, selling prisoners of war for money and advanced weaponry that allowed them to further dominate surrounding kingdoms and continue the cycle all over again. Military discipline and brutality was also on display during an annual ritual called the Customs of Daomi, which began around 1730 and involved parades, the exchanging of gifts and tributes,

and finally the beheading of hundreds of prisoners of war as human sacrifices. The name for the ceremony in the fond language, Zwentinu, translates to yearly head business. It was meant to be a massive display of strength, a strength that was only possible thanks to the arrival of Western European powers who wanted to purchase human beings and enslave them. The girl that would eventually come to be known as Sarah Forbes-Benetta was captured by Daomi troops in 1848 during a slave hunt in which the soldiers burned her village Okeodan in Yaruba to the ground

and murdered her siblings and parents. Sarah was captured, but rather than being sold to Europeans, she was brought to the Daomi Palace to serve King Gezo, the reigning monarch at the time. Historians speculate that Sarah might have been noble-born because she was brought to the palace instead of being sold or killed, but we don't know for sure.

However, by the time that she arrived in England and her story became well-known throughout Great Britain, she was mythologized to the point where people would refer to her as an African princess or the daughter of a chief. But we don't know that for sure. We can only speculate. just like we don't know Sarah Forbes Benetta's real name,

the name she was born with and used for the first seven years of her life. Some historians speculate that her birth name was Ina, or some variation on it, sometimes spelled A-I-N-A, because later, that name appears on her marriage license. Her marriage certificate is the one piece of writing we have in her own handwriting. the words Ina, Sarah, Forbes, Beneta. For clarity's sake, I'll continue to refer to her as Sarah because that's the name by which she's most commonly referenced.

A few years after Sarah was taken by the Daomi soldiers to King Gezo's Palace, a British captain arrived in Daoomi. Captain Frederick E. Forbes was a naval captain of the West African Squadron, or W.A.S. which was a collection of ships patrolling the western coast of Africa with the goal of stopping the slave trade. England had abolished the slave trade in 1807 and then went on to abolish slavery in its colonies in 1833. But the slave trade still continued from France and Spain, and of course the slave trade continued to the United States. It would actually be King Gezzo's son, the next king of Daomi,

who would go on to oversee the trade of the last ever, by then illegal, ship of enslaved African people bound for America. According to Captain Forbes's account, King Gezzo was a uniquely harsh leader. Forbes referred to him as an African Nero. We also get a drawing from the captain of what the king looked like. In the drawing, King Gezo has a thin, Gomez-Adam-style mustache. He wears a one-shoulder, robe in bright, astonishingly bright blue, that looks like a cross between a French king's robe and

a toga. His wide-brimmed hat is edged with tassels. Captain Forbes was part of the British movement to eliminate the slave trade globally, which required negotiations with their neighbor in European countries, as well as making treaties with African nations. The captain was in Daomi with the purpose of getting the king to agree to no longer sell enslaved prisoners and to instead begin to engage more heavily in palm oil trading. At this point, the selling of enslaved people was King Geso's kingdom's primary source of income, and so while he greeted Captain Forbes with respect, he denied his request to eliminate the supply of slaves. It was already the bedrock of his kingdom's economy. But even unsuccessful diplomatic missions engage in the appropriate rituals of politeness. And so as gifts to Captain

Forbes to pass along to his sovereign Queen Victoria, King Gezzo gifted, quote, a rich country cloth, a captive girl, a cabooseer's stool, ten heads of cowries, and one keg of rum. Did you catch that second thing listed there? A small captive girl was given to Captain Forbes, so that you that he might pass her along to Queen Victoria as a gift. Forbes writes that as abhorrent as he believed slavery to be, he feared rejecting the gift because Daomi culture commonly involved ritual sacrifice. It's also possible that he saw the young girl enslaved in the palace and bargained for her so that he could, quote unquote, rescue her. Either way, the young girl accompanied Captain Forbes back to his ship, the HMS Bonetta, and he christened her with the name that she would use

for the rest of her life. Sarah Forbes Bonetta. Almost immediately, young Sarah surprised the crew with how quickly she learned English. Forbes would later write, quote, for her age, she is a perfect genius. She now speaks English well and has a great talent for music. She has won the affections, with but few exceptions of all who have known her by her docile and amiable conduct, which nothing can exceed. But for all of his fairly condescending benevolence

toward his new ward, there was also a slightly nefarious edge to Forbes's interest in her. From the moment that Sarah joined the crew on the Benetta, she was a specimen. With that in mind, the rest of Captain Forbes's quote, continues, quote, She is far in advance of any white child of her age in aptness of learning and strength of mind and affection,

and with her being an excellent specimen of the Negro race, might test the capability of the intellect of the black. It being generally and erroneously supposed that, after a certain age, the intellect becomes impaired and the pursuit of knowledge impossible, that though the Negro child may be clever, the adult will be dull and stuble. stupid. Her head is considered so excellent a phrenological specimen and illustrating such high intellect that M. Pistruchy, the medalist to the mint, has undertaken a bust of her. As Olusoga writes in Black and British, quote, Victoria ruled over an empire that, in the latter decades of the 19th century, was increasingly influenced by racial thinking and new, quote unquote,

scientific racial theories. And Victoria, like most Victorians, thought in terms of racial types, and may well have believed, to some extent, that the races of mankind possessed innate inner characteristics. End quote. Almost as soon as Sarah arrived in London, she was brought to Windsor Palace to meet the queen, her new godmother, who remarked that the girl spoke perfect English and was, quote, dressed as any other girl, presumably meaning Victorian dress. As the girl's godmother, Queen Victoria was determined to arrange for Sarah's education.

For the next few months, Sarah was educated and cared for by a woman named Mrs. Phipps, who would periodically bring the girl to see Queen Victoria. In one of the Queen's diary entries, she wrote, After luncheon, Sarah Bonita, the little African girl, came with Mrs. Phipps and showed me, some of her work. This is the fourth time I have seen the poor child, who is really an intelligent thing. But the English climate didn't agree with Sarah, or at least that's what people believed, when she became withdrawn and melancholy with a deep cough. To get her to a more amiable climate,

Sarah was sent to the Church Missionary Society School in Freetown Sierra Leone, a British colony. The British at the time viewed Sierra Leone as a total. hold for bringing Christianity into Africa. The hope was that the Africans educated at the missionary school would continue east, building missionary momentum, and eventually helping the anti-slave trade movement. Many of the other students at the school were liberated from intercepted slave ships, or they were the children of those who were rescued. While Sarah was studying in Sierra Leone's favorable climate, Queen Victoria continued to send along books and little gifts, and allegedly it was Sarah's own unhappiness that prompted the queen to bring her back to England after four years abroad.

Now 12 years old, Sarah was put under the care of two former missionaries who had served in Africa, Mr. and Mrs. Shone, who lived in Kent. Sarah studied with them, learning English and French alongside their daughter, Annie, who became a friend of hers. all the while her godmother kept an active presence in her life. Annie Shone wrote, Queen Victoria gave constant proofs of her kindly interest in Sarah. At the midsummer and Christmas seasons,

she often went either to Windsor or Osborne to stay in the family of one of the officers of her majesty's household and was frequently sent for by the queen to see her privately. But being in the royal orbit, with its privileges, also has its costs. the sacrifices that people, but especially women, were forced to make to exist in high society. In January 1862, the queen's daughter, Princess Alice, fulfilled her duty of marrying one of the royal princes of Europe, Louis of Hess, who was scoped out for her by her older sister, the queen's eldest

daughter, Victoria. Sarah Bonetta attended the royal wedding, and later that year, the queen would compel Sarah to get married herself. Sarah was taken away from the shuns, not by her own choice, and forced to move to a miserable house in Brighton with two elderly ladies, with the stated purpose of them preparing Sarah to enter British high society. It was while Sarah was living in Brighton, miserable and far from the people who loved her, that she received a proposal by a man named James Pinson-Lubolo Davies, who was a relatively wealthy Yoruba businessman, 31 years old, living in Britain. James Davies was the son of parents who had been freed by the British from a slave ship, and like Sarah, he had been educated at the missionary school in Sierra Leone.

Sarah, 18 years old, had very little interest in marrying him. In a letter to her former guardian, Mrs. Shone, Sarah wrote, quote, Others would say, he is a good man, and though you don't care about him now, we'll soon learn to love him. That, I believe, I never could do. I know that the generality of people would say he is rich, and you're marrying him would at once make you independent, and I say, am I to barter my peace of mind for money?

No, never. But Queen Victoria had made up her mind. She thought it was a wonderful, convenient, and altogether prudent, and so Queen Victoria granted her permission for the marriage, which meant that, in effect, she issued an order. The wedding itself was a spectacle, which began with a promenade of ten horse-drawn carriages, arriving at the St. Nicholas Church in Brighton.

Sarah Bonetta had 16 bridesmaids, 12 of whom were white and four were black. I think the best way to describe what the event was like is through the lens of how it was reported at the time. This article, originally from the Brighton News, was published in the Daily News on August 14, 1862. The headline is, Interesting marriage in Brighton.

I'm quoting directly now, quote, This morning, a marriage is to be performed at the Paris Church, Brighton, to unite a lady and gentlemen of color, whose previous history gives to the ceremony a peculiar interest. chiefly to those who have been so long and so deeply interested in the African race and who have watched the progress of civilization caused by the influence of Christianity on the Negro. And the ceremony will also tell our brethren on the other side of the Atlantic that British ladies and gentlemen consider it a pleasure and a privilege

to do honor those of the African race who have proved themselves capable of appreciating the advantages of a liberal education. Several things I want to point out about that framing, but first is that the newspaper has not yet mentioned Sarah Bonetta's name. The reference to Brethren across the Atlantic is, of course, a dig at the United States. The newspaper article continues, quote, The Lady, supposed to be an African chieftain's daughter, was presented when about the age of five years to the late Captain Frederick Forbes.

The next paragraph features a long excerpt from a book that Forbes wrote about his experience in Daomi, in which he says that the girl he met was about eight years old, the very next paragraph. It's also worth noting that this is a point where the mythology of Sarah being a chieftain's daughter is deeply embedded in the public consciousness. A few weeks after their marriage, the newlyweds had their portrait taken by Camille Sylvie, a photographer to the rich and famous. Sylvie, still in his 20s at this time, had photographed almost the entirety of the British royal family,

with the exclusion of the queen. Sarah and James getting their photograph taken was a clear status symbol. Thanks to Sarah's royal benefactor, they had arrived in the upper echelon of British society. The two eventually moved to Lagos, where James worked with middling success as a shipping merchant, and where Sarah would give birth to her first child, a daughter whom she named Victoria, with the queen's permission, of course. The queen was the baby Victoria's godmother as well,

and as a gift she sent the infant a gold cup, tea tray, and a knife, fork, and spoon. The cup was inscribed to Victoria Davies from her godmother, Victoria, Queen of Great Britain in Ireland, 1863. Sarah and James would have two more children in relatively quick succession, and Sarah periodically returned to England to visit the queen and to show the queen her namesake children. But by the mid-1870s, Sarah was suffering from tuberculosis, and no doubt her condition wasn't helped by the stress of her husband's failing business, which by this point was 20,000 pounds in debt. It was thought for the second time in her life that a gentler climate would help Sarah's health, and so she was moved to Madeira, the island region off the coast of Portugal. In 1880, at only 37 years old, Sarah Forbes Benetta

died. Her daughter Victoria was en route to visit her godmother, Queen Victoria, when she heard the news of her mother's death. Queen Victoria received her at Osborne House and wrote in her diary, my black godchild was dreadfully upset and distressed. Her father had failed in business, which aggravated her poor mother's illness. I shall give her an annuity. Sarah Forbes Benetta was buried on Madeira, but back in Lagos, her husband erected an obelisk in her honor. It's a small, permanent stone reminder of a woman who is thrust across the sea, forced to live a new life, and who died too young. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od,

and that's exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be the odds. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Longoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out.

We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. Like, I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month? I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If you are a founder or a freelancer or the friend who always says,

You know what? What if I started that? This is for you. I'm telling you I had nothing to my name. I didn't know a single person in New York. And somehow I'm dressed by Oscar de Laurenta walking down that red carpet. This month, we sit down with entrepreneurs and creators who actually did it, who turned the scary leap into a business, a paycheck, and a life they are proud of. Direct center of our happiness or our regrets is whether or not we're taking action on the things that matter to us. They're not selfish. They're so important. They actually lead to our greatest contributions. because when we're living fulfilled,

we actually show up better everywhere. We lead better. We're better friends. We're better relationships and collaborators and all those things because we have passion about the things we're doing. If you're trying to build something of your own this year, join us in these conversations

that will make you braver and smarter with your money. Listen to Dos Amigos as part of the Michael Tutta Podcast Network available on the IHartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. It's strange to try to unravel the legacy of Sarah Forbes Beneta when so much of her story has been told through the words of others. But there's one absolutely fascinating modern figure with a direct tie to her. Sarah Forbes Beneta's great, great granddaughter was born in Nigeria.

She graduated from the University of Lagos College of Medicine and worked as a resident at the Lagos University Teaching Hospital. Her name was Amayo Adadovo and when she correctly recognized that a patient, a Liberian businessman, was exhibiting symptoms of Ebola, she forced him into quarantine, despite pressure from the Liberian ambassador who wanted the patient discharged. Without the proper protective equipment, Adadovo still tried to isolate the patient and prevent widespread infection. She herself was infected, and she died of the Ebola virus in 2014, but her quick thinking and brave actions saved countless lives.

Later that year, after the Nigerian Ministry of Health set up an Ebola Emergency Operations the World Health Organization declared Nigeria Ebola-free. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz. Executive producers include Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by Rima Il-Kali and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at noblebloodtales.com.

For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This financial literacy month, we are talking about the one investment most people ignore, building a business around the life you actually want. It was just us, making happen whatever he said was going to happen, and then it happened.

On those amigos, entrepreneurs like Ameri Kama Sam and Joe Ha, get real about money, taking risk, and while your dream might be the smartest move. At the end of my life, what am I really going to care about? And the conclusion I came to is what I did to make the world a better place in whatever way. Listen to those amigos on the IHard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

This is an IHeart podcast, Guaranteed Human.