Ignatius Sancho
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Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729-December 14 1780) was a composer, actor, and writer. He is the first known Afro-Briton to vote in a British election. 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.[citation needed] 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 in English that was written by a former slave.
[edit] Biography
Ignatius Sancho was born on a slave ship in 1729. Because of this, his birthdate is unknown. When his mother died in the Spanish colony of New Granada and his father committed suicide rather than live as a slave, Sancho was taken to England and given to three maiden sisters living in Greenwich in 1731. While a young man he met the Duke of Montagu, who took an interest in his education (as he had with that of Francis Williams), and in 1749 Sancho ran away and sought refuge with the Montagu family. The Duke of Montagu had just died but his wife agreed to employ him as butler; when the Duchess of Montagu died in 1751 she left Sancho an annuity of £30 and a year's salary. The salary, and his savings, gave Sancho £70 in available money, which he spent on women, gambling and the theatre.[1] An attempt at a career as an actor, playing roles in Othello and Oroonoko, failed.
In 1766, Sancho became a valet to the newly recreated Duke of Montagu, the son-in-law of his earlier patrons. In 1768 his portrait was painted by Thomas Gainsborough. With help from Montagu, Sancho and his wife — Ann Osborne — set up a grocery shop in Westminster in early-1774. In addition to shop-work, Sancho wrote and published Theory of Music and two plays. As a financially-independent male householder living in Westminster, he qualified to vote in parliamentary elections of 1774 and 1780, and is the first known black person of African origin to have done so in Britain. At this time he also wrote letters and in newspapers, under his own name and via the pseudonym 'Africanus': Sancho's political orientation was in support of the monarchy and of British forces in the American Revolutionary War.
Ignatius Sancho died from the effects of gout on 14 December 1780, and became the first African to be given an obituary in the British press.[2]. Two years later Frances Crewe arranged for his letters to be published, appearing as the two-volume The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, and his widow received over £500 in royalties.
A plaque to Sancho was unveiled on June 15 2007 by Nick Raynsford, MP for Greenwich. Situated on the remaining wall of Montague House on the south west boundary of Greenwich Park, it was funded by Friends of Greenwich Park to commemorate the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, 1807. Sancho was once butler in Montague House.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Vincent Carretta, ‘Sancho, (Charles) Ignatius (1729?–1780)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).
- ^ Ibid.
Friends of Greenwich Park newsletter. Summer 2007.
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