Westminster’s local history and archives: Black History

In celebration of Black History Month 2022, Westminster Archives are sharing a small selection of publications and books to give a taster of what we hold in our reference collection relating to Black History in Westminster and more generally. All these titles can either be viewed during a visit to our Search Room at St Ann’s Street or requested from our reference store.

Black History London Map

Black History London Map

The Black History London Map, published September 2022, by Avril Nanton and Jody Burton is a light and portable guide to Black History London locations across the city including statues, blue plaques and other sites of contemporary and historical interest in City of Westminster and wider London.

Shelf Location: P912. 4211 Search Room Pamphlets Collection

Black Lives in the English Archives, 1500-1677: Imprints of the Invisible

Black Lives in the English Archives by Imtiaz Habb

Black Lives in the English Archives by Imtiaz Habb is a comprehensive guide to documentary records of black lives in Tudor and Stuart England, including a chronological index of records from 1500-1677. The breadth of material covered includes Early Tudor Records, Elizabethan London, Seventeenth- Century London and Black People outside London 1558-1677.

Shelf Location: 305.896 HAB SEARCH ROOM

Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors

Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors by Guy Grannum

The book Tracing Your Caribbean Ancestors by Guy Grannum, produced by The National Archives, provides a guide to the most important records for the study of Caribbean genealogy and heritage.

Shelf Location: 929.38 GRA Search Room

Black Londoners 1880-1990

Black Londoners 1880-1990 by Susan Okokon

Black Londoners 1880-1990 by Susan Okokon comprises of a series of brief biographies and chronicles working lives in the capital. The book includes a few famous names as well as a glimpse into the lives of ordinary families, mothers, fathers, children and teenagers.

Shelf location: 305.8960421 STORE

Under Fire: Black Britain in Wartime 1939-45

Under Fire: Black Britains in Wartime 1939-1945 by Stephen Bourne

Under Fire: Black Britains in Wartime 1939-1945 by Stephen Bourne is a study of black civilians’ contributions to the war effort during World War II through various voluntary roles, at home and abroad, as air-raid wardens, fire-fighters, entertainers and other occupations. Among the many stories is one local to Westminster that of E.I.Ekpenyon, a Nigerian law student turned ARP warden in St Marylebone.

Shelf Location: 305.896 BOU Search Room

Jimi Hendrix: The Man, The Magic, The Truth

Jimi Hendrix: The Man, The Magic, The Truth by Sharon Lawrence

American- born Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970), singer and guitarist, was a resident of Westminster for a short time before his untimely death in 1970. He lived, worked and performed in a number of locations across the City of Westminster including 23 Brook Street, now the Handel Hendrix Museum, 34 Montagu Street, The Scotch of St James and the Bag O’Nails. His last location at the time of his premature death in 1970 was recorded on his death certificate as 507/508 Cumberland Hotel, Great Cumberland Place, Marylebone. Jimi Hendrix: The Man, The Magic, The Truth is the powerful story of Hendrix’s life, from poverty-stricken background to star of the Sixties in London and elsewhere.

Shelf Location: 920 HEN STORE

More online

You can find a map of Black History locations in Westminster created by the team at Westminster Archives in 2020:

Black History in Westminster

All library members have free access to Ancestry and FindMyPast, available at all library sites across the borough. FindMyPast have more information about Black geneaology resources on their website.

Please get in touch with the Westminster Archives Centre if you wish to explore more. We can be contacted at archives@wcclibraries

Georgina, Westminster Archives

The great and the good

All of us who live or work in Westminster have walked through Trafalgar Square dozens of times, but how many of us have actually looked at Nelson’s Column  properly? Certainly not me until recently when I happened to look at the bas-reliefs at the base of the pillar and wondered what they actually represented. Coincidentally on the bus home I heard a trailer for an excellent-sounding radio programme, Britain’s Black Past which mentioned the reliefs and revealed that at least one of the sailors pictured was black. A bit of research revealed that a third of the crew of the Victory, Nelson’s ship, were born outside Britain (including, somewhat surprisingly, three Frenchmen) and that one of the men pictured, George Ryan, was black.

As we celebrate Black History Month, what other memorials of interest can we find in Westminster?

Well, for a start there’s the oldest monument in London – Cleopatra’s Needle. Nothing to do with Cleopatra, it actually predates her by 1500 years, being made for Pharoah Thotmes III. One slightly odd feature of the Needle is that the four sphinxes, ostensibly there to guard it, actually face inwards so you’d think they’d be fairly easy to surprise…

Moving forward to the eighteenth century brings us to Ignatius Sancho (1724-1780) who, despite pretty much the worst possible start in life (he was born on  slave ship and both his parents died soon after) became butler to the Duke of Montagu and, after securing his freedom, was the only eighteenth-century Afro-Briton known to have voted in a general election (in Westminster). He wrote many letters to the literary figures of the time such as the actor David Garrick and the writer Laurence Sterne, was painted by Thomas Gainsborough and was also a prolific composer.

You can read more about Sancho in several books available to view at Westminster City Archives, and listen to some of his compositions.

And if you happen to be passing the Foreign and Commonweath Office, see if you can spot the memorial to him.

A more famous near-contemporary of Sancho, was Olaudah Equiano (1747-1797), another former slave and author of one of the earliest autobiographies by a black Briton.

Like George Ryan, Equiano (or Gustavus Vassa as he was known in his lifetime) was a sailor who travelled to the Caribbean, South America and the Arctic, having been kidnapped from Africa as a child. While still a slave, Equiano converted to Christianity and was baptised in St Margaret’s Westminster. His autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was one of the first slave narratives and was reprinted several times in Equiano’s lifetime. He became a leading member of the  abolitionist movement, as one of the Sons of Africa, a group of former slaves in London who campaigned against slavery. You can see a plaque to him at 73 Riding House Street, Paddington and see him portrayed  by Youssoo N’Dour in the  film Amazing Grace.

One black Briton who needs almost no introduction is Mary Seacole (1805-1881), who fought racial prejudice to nurse and feed  soldiers in the Crimea and who was so popular with her former patients that the Times reported on 26th April 1856 that, at a public banquet at the Royal Surrey Gardens:

“Among the illustrious visitors was Mrs Seacole whose appearance awakened the most raputurous enthusiasm. The soldiers not only cheered her but chaired her around the gardens and she really might have suffocated from the oppressive attentions of her admirers were it not that two sergeants of extraordinary stature gallantly undertook to protect her from the pressures of the crowd.”

You can follow the famous war correspondent WH Russell in the Times Digital Archive (log in with your library card number) – he was a great admirer of Mrs Seacole. And if you haven’t already, do read her extraordinary autobiography The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. There are two plaques in her honour in Westminster – one at 147 George Street and one at 14 Soho Square.

Less well-known than Mary Seacole  is Henry Sylvester Williams (1869-1911), a Trinidadian teacher who came to London in the 1890s, studied Latin at King’s College and qualified as a barrister in 1897 (though he earned his living as a lecturer for the Temperance Association). He was a founder-member of the Pan-African Association, whose aims were

“to secure civil and political rights for Africans and their descendants throughout the world; to encourage African peoples everywhere in educational, industrial and commercial enterprise; to ameliorate the condition of the oppressed Negro in Africa, America, the British Empire, and other parts of the world”

In 1906, Williams was elected as a Progressive for Marylebone Council and, along with John Archer in Battersea, was one of the first black people elected to public office in Britain. You can read more about Williams (and the other people listed here) in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and see a plaque erected by Westminster Council in his honour at 38 Church Street.

Bringing us nearer the present day are two former residents of Westminster who everyone knows. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix, discussed before in this blog, lived for a short time in 1968 at 23 Brook Street, Mayfair, and you can see a blue plaque to him there.

And we finish on perhaps the most famous memorial of recent years – in 2007 a bronze statue of Nelson Mandela was erected in Parliament Square in the presence of Mr Mandela himself.

You can find out more about the people in this blog by checking out our library catalogue and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography as well as our Newspaper Archives. Plus if you want to know who the first Black British woman to write an autobiography was, don’t miss the event at Paddington Library on 27 October!

[Nicky]

Are you experienced?

“Purple haze all in my brain
Lately things just don’t seem the same
Actin’ funny, but I don’t know why
‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky”

As all lovers of popular music will know, 27 November 2012 is – or would have been – the 70^th birthday of James Marshall Hendrix, better known as Jimi.

He sadly isn’t around to celebrate it as he died in London on 18 September 1970. Forty-two years after his death, to many he is still, quite simply, the greatest guitarist of all time.

The basic details of Hendrix’ life can be found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and, to be honest, it’s the usual rock star story of army, music, drugs and a tragically early death. What really matters is the music, played with his unique  upside-down style (Hendrix was left-handed and played a right-handed guitar upside-down). You can find plenty of CDs of his work in stock in Westminster Libraries as well as  biographies and musical criticism. For an in-depth critique online as well as a comprehensive discography, videography and bibliography, check out the Encylopaedia of Popular Music, part of Oxford Music Online and for some more serious criticism, have a look at African American Music Reference, from the Alexander Street Press.

For some contemporary accounts of his life, you can check out some of our archive of newspapers and magazines. His tragic death was reported on the front page of the Daily Mirror. Ironically the first time he was mentioned in The Times was in a report of the death of  the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein, as a concert he was giving  was cancelled as a mark of respect. Only three years later, his own obituary was published in the same paper:

“In contrast to the violence and seeming anarchy of his music, Hendrix was a gentle, peaceful man whose only real concern was music. His final public appearance was when he sat in with War, an American band, at Ronnie Scott’s club in London last Wednesday, and it was typical of the man that it was he who felt honoured by being allowed to play.”

Hendrix spent much of his short career in London and anyone who wants to get closer to the man might wish to visit the Handel House Museum in Brook Street, Mayfair. For several months in 1968, Hendrix lived next door – he was thrilled to discover the Handel connection. His flat is now used as the offices of the museum. And when you’ve seen where he lived, you’ll be able to see his most famous gig on the big screen as Hendrix 70 : Live at Woodstock  is released in cinemas around the country.

[Nicky]