Cesar Picton
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Cesar Picton (ca. 1755 Senegal – 1836 Kingston-on-Thames, England) was enslaved at the age of six. He was brought to England by an English army officer, and in 1761 was "presented" as a servant to Sir John Phillips, a Baronet living in Norbiton near Kingston in Surrey.
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[edit] Slave to servant
Sir John's journal recorded this along with the gift of “a parakeet and a foreign duck”. He was rapidly baptised by the Phillips, who were supporters of missionary work — he had quite likely come from an Islamic family. Initially rigged out as an exotic page-boy, with a velvet turban (cost 10 shillings and sixpence) in the rococo fashion of the day, he became a favourite of the family, especially Lady Phillips. When Picton was about 33, Horace Walpole wrote in a letter of 1788: "I was in Kingston with the sisters of Lord Milford; they have a favourite black, who has been with them a great many years and is remarkably sensible". Lord Milford was the son of the Phillips', who were by then both dead. "Sensible" at this period meant "possessing sensibility", as opposed to the usual modern meaning of calm, down to earth, and the like. He had clearly achieved an unusual status in the household by this stage. Picton took his surname from Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire, the Phillips's country estate, which was then a significant site for mining coal.[1]
The status of slaves imported into England was legally ambiguous and unclear when Picton arrived, but they were certainly not regarded or treated in the same way as slaves in the British American colonies. The situation was clarified considerably by Somersett's Case of 1772, which although the details are unclear when analysed by lawyers, was generally taken to hold than no person could be a slave in England itself (confirming other reported judgements of 1567 and 1702). Many white apprentices and workers of the time would be classified as near-slaves, though in a time-limited way, by modern standards, and already most black servants seem to have been regarded and treated as free, at least by the time they reached adulthood.
[edit] Tradesman to gentleman
Following the deaths of Sir John in 1784, and his wife in 1788, and the sale of Norbiton Place by their son, Picton used a legacy of £100 from Lady Phillips to set up in business as a coal merchant in nearby Kingston. The move from servant to tradesman was a common one; Picton was presumably well-known to the owners and upper servants of the many large houses in the area after nearly thirty years at Norbiton. The three unmarried Phillips daughters had moved to nearby Hampton Court on the sale of the house, and since they all later left him legacies (in total by 1820, £250 and £30 a year), they may well have been ready to push their friends to buy coal from him. In the phrase of the day, he had "connections". In addition, it is probably no coincidence that the Phillips's estate at Picton was a centre of coal mining; he may well have sourced his supplies from them, to mutual advantage, and perhaps had already been involved in managing their affairs.
At any rate, he was extremely successful in business. His original premises on Kingston High St are still called Picton House, and are marked with a blue plaque. He had lived there for the first years of his business, initially renting, but in 1795 buying the premises, and other property including a wharf onto the river Thames for unloading the coal, and a malthouse. In 1807 Picton let his Kingston properties and moved to a rented house in Tolworth, perhaps marking his retirement at 52 from active trade. He was by then described in deeds as a "gentleman", and by 1816 he could buy a house in Thames Ditton for the very large sum of £4,000. He died in 1836 at the age of 81, and is buried in All Saints Church in Kingston — he was evidently a very large man as a four-wheeled trolley was needed for the coffin. He was probably the richest of the many thousands of black people living in Britain at the time.
[edit] Legacy
Picton left a portrait of himself in his will (along with several other paintings), but its whereabouts are not known. It emerged in 2007 that the portrait used as his in a mural of Kingston's history commissioned by the Council was actually of either Olaudah Equiano or, more likely, of Ignatius Sancho.[2] He is not known to have married, and all his bequests were to friends, including 16 mourning rings. Although Picton lived through the main period of the British Abolitionist movement, and was doubtless sympathetic to it, any involvement by him remains unknown.
Kingston University holds an annual Cesar Picton Lecture.
During Picton's time in Kingston, the area also gave rise to a significant legal case related to slavery in Regina v Inhabitants of Thames Ditton of 1785, where Lord Mansfield (previously the judge in Somersett's Case) held that Charlotte Howe, a former slave, was not entitled to pay for her previous work, in the absence of a specific contract.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.acadat.com/HLC/milford/themes.htm#coal Archaeology in Wales
- ^ I came, I saw, I blundered page 1 lead story, The Kingston Informer, March 23, 2007.
