Ignatius Sancho


Charles Ignatius Sancho was a British composer, actor, and writer. He is the only Briton of African heritage known to have been eligible and voted in an 18th-century general election through property qualifications. He gained fame in his time as "the extraordinary Negro", and to 18th-century British abolitionists he became a symbol of the humanity of Africans and immorality of the slave trade. The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited and published two years after his death, is one of the earliest accounts of African slavery written in English by a former enslaved person.

Biography

Charles Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, in what was known as the Middle Passage. His mother died not long after in the Spanish colony of New Granada, corresponding to modern Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, and Venezuela. His father reportedly took his own life rather than live as a slave. Sancho's owner took the young orphan, barely two years old to England and gave him to three unmarried sisters in Greenwich, where he lived from ca. 1731 to 1749. John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu , impressed by Sancho's intellect, frankness, and his amiability, not only encouraged him to read, but also lent him books from his personal library at Blackheath. Sancho's informal education made his lack of freedom in Greenwich unbearable, and he ran away to the Montagus in 1749. For two years until her death in 1751, Sancho worked as the butler for Mary Montagu, Duchess of Montagu, at Montagu House, where he flourished by immersing himself in music, poetry, reading, and writing. At her death in 1751 he received an annuity of £30 and a year's salary, which he quickly squandered.
During the 1760s Sancho married a West Indian woman, Anne Osborne. He became a devoted husband and father. They had seven children: Frances Joanna, Ann Alice, Elizabeth Bruce, Jonathan William, Lydia, Katherine Margaret, and William Leach Osborne. Around the time of the birth of their third child, Sancho became a valet to George Montagu, 1st Duke of Montagu, son-in-law of his earlier patron. He remained there until 1773.
In 1768 Thomas Gainsborough painted a portrait of Sancho at the same time as the Duchess of Montagu sat for her portrait by the artist. By the late 1760s Sancho had already become accomplished and was considered by many to be a man of refinement.
In 1766, at the height of the debate about slavery, Sancho wrote to Laurence Sterne encouraging the famous writer to use his pen to lobby for the abolition of the slave trade.
In July 1766 Sancho's letter was received by Reverend Laurence Sterne shortly after he had just finished writing a conversation between his fictional characters, Corporal Trim and his brother Tom in Tristram Shandy, wherein Tom described the oppression of an African servant in a sausage shop in Lisbon that he had visited. Laurence Sterne's widely publicised 27 July 1766 response to Sancho's letter became an integral part of 18th-century abolitionist literature.
Following the publication of the Sancho-Sterne letters, Sancho became widely known as a man of letters.
Sancho, an African participant and voter in Westminster, noted that despite being in Britain since the age of two he felt he was "only a lodger, and hardly that." In other writings he describes: "Went by water - had a coach home - were gazed at - followed, etc. etc. - but not much abused." On another occasion, he writes: "They stopped us in the town and most generously insulted us."
, a painting some suggest to depict a young Ignatius Sancho. It was previously believed to have depicted Olaudah Equiano.
In 1774 with help from Montagu, Sancho, suffering from ill health with gout, opened a greengrocery shop, offering merchandise such as tobacco, sugar and tea, at 19 Charles Street in London's Mayfair, Westminster. These were goods then mostly produced by slaves.
As shopkeeper Sancho enjoyed more time to socialise, correspond with his many friends, share his enjoyment of literature, and he attracted many people to his shop. He wrote and published a Theory of Music'' and two plays. As a financially independent male householder living in Westminster, he qualified to vote in the parliamentary elections of 1774 and 1780; he was the first person of African origin known to have voted in Britain. At this time he also wrote letters and in newspapers, under his own name and under the pseudonym "Africanus". He supported the monarchy and British forces in the American Revolutionary War.
Among his acquaintances were celebrated figures such as Thomas Gainsborough, the Shakespearean actor David Garrick, violin virtuoso Felice Giardini, the preacher Dr. Dodd, the renowned sculptor Joseph Nollekens, and the novelist Laurence Sterne. Nollekens gave Sancho a plaster cast of his c. 1766 marble bust of Laurence Sterne. Sancho received many prominent visitors at his shop, including statesman and abolitionist Charles James Fox PC, who successfully steered a resolution through Parliament pledging it to abolish the slave trade. He oversaw a Foreign Slave Trade Bill in spring 1806 that prohibited British subjects from contributing to the trading of slaves with the colonies of Britain's wartime enemies, thus eliminating two-thirds of the slave trade passing through British ports.
Ignatius Sancho died from the effects of gout on 14 December 1780 and was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret's Westminster. There is no memorial at the church as the grave stones in the churchyard were covered over with grass in 1880 but no inscription was found for him when a record was made of the existing epitaphs.
He was the first person of African descent known to be given an obituary in the British press.

''Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho''

While his correspondence often included domestic issues, also commented on the political and literary life in 18th-century Britain, One of his more famous series of letters includes his eye-witness accounts of the Gordon Riots in June 1780. The angry mob passed outside his shop on Charles Street. The protest that began when Protestants protested against parliamentary extension of Catholic enfranchisement grew into a violent mob of 100,000 looting and burning parts of London.
In 1782 Frances Crewe, a correspondent with Sancho, arranged for 160 of his letters to be published in the form of two-volumes entitled, The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, with more than 2000 subscribing to it. His widow received more than £500 in royalties. Joseph Jekyll provided the memoirs to the first edition, which was reprinted with each additional edition including the fifth edition published by Sancho's son in 1803.
His son, William Leach Osborne, inherited the shop and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business. He printed a fifth edition of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho with Memoirs of His Life by Joseph Jekyll and the frontispiece engraving by Bartolozzi, in 1803 at this shop on Charles Street.
I am Sir an Affrican – with two ffs – if you please - & proud am I to be of a country that knows no politicians – nor lawyers--- nor … nor thieves of any denomination save Natural....

On slavery

Sancho was unusually blunt in his response to a letter from Jack Wingrave, John Wingrave's son. Jack wrote about his negative reaction to people of colour based on his own experience in India during the 1770s. Sancho's friend, John was a London bookbinder and bookseller.
I am sorry to observe that the practice of your country ; I say it is with reluctance, that I must observe your country's conduct has been uniformly wicked in the East – West-Indies – and even on the coast of Guinea. The grand object of English navigators – indeed of all Christian navigators – is money – money – money – for which I do not pretend to blame them – Commerce was meant by the goodness of the Deity to diffuse the various goods of the earth into every part – to unite mankind in the blessed chains of brotherly love – society – and mutual dependence: the enlightened Christian should diffuse the riches of the Gospel of peace – with the commodities of his respective land – Commerce attended with strict honesty – and with Religion for its companion – would be a blessing to every shore it touched at. In Africa, the poor wretched natives blessed with the most fertile and luxuriant soil – are rendered so much the more miserable for what Providence meant as a blessing: the Christians' abominable traffic for slaves and the horrid cruelty and treachery of the petty Kings encouraged by their Christian customers who carry them strong liquors to enflame their national madness – and powder – and bad fire-arms – to furnish them with the hellish means of killing and kidnapping.

Legacy