More untold stories: Julia Bush extends our series on Bristol Quakers and transatlantic chattel slavery
‘The rest is silence.’
Africans in eighteenth-century Bristol were not a large community, and Bristol was never the home of black abolitionist leaders such as Ottabah Cugoano, Olaudah Equiano, and Ignatius Sancho. But, after work done by some Bristol Friends, it has been possible to recover the names and something of the life stories of a few young Africans whose presence in Bristol was the result of Quaker involvement in transatlantic chattel slavery. These stories provide significant evidence of Bristol’s evolving African diaspora in its earliest years. They also offer a glimpse of varied relationships between African servants and their white Quaker masters and mistresses.
During a visit to his Jamaican plantations in 1757, Caleb Dickinson, a Quaker plantation owner (see ‘Untold stories’, 21 June), casually promised John Macutchion, a British agent in the sugar export business, that he would receive ‘a little Negro boy he bought on the Bay’. This promise had almost been forgotten by the time the child reached London, but arrangements were quickly made for him to be sent by stagecoach to Bristol, under the care of another passenger. ‘The weather being severe, he had need be an inside passenger – and as he is a Negro child, his passage may be paid here on his arrival.’ A few days later Caleb shared the news with his brother: ‘I have wrote to Barwell to send down the boy – for I must oblige Macutchion, besides I promised him – but not at £35 a year.’ He plainly had no wish to keep the child in slavery, but was equally reluctant to be saddled with a lasting commitment to maintain him.
Fortunately, other Bristol Quakers were on hand to help: ‘I expect Brother Goldney, who loves amusement, will take him – I’ll keep one of his Birds instead.’ Thomas Goldney, a wealthy merchant banker, and a pillar of Bristol Meeting, was engaged in building a splendid new home, including a grotto adorned with Caribbean shells, an elaborate garden, and a collection of exotic birds. This chilling exchange seems to have been accomplished, for a month later Caleb wrote to another Jamaican business partner, ‘Give my compliments to Mr M, whom I shall write to shortly… his boy Champagne is here and goes to school.’ We do not know how the boy’s story ended.
Like most plantation owners, the Dickinsons often found themselves negotiating the ambiguous status of children of dual heritage (from an enslaved mother and a white British father). In November 1764 Caleb Dickinson wrote a reference letter for Billy, the son of Poll, his African cook in Jamaica, who had travelled back to England with him in 1757 and been apprenticed to a country carpenter. While in England Billy had been treated ‘as other servants are’ (crossed out entry: ‘as our white servants are’). Billy ‘is become master of his business and has behaved very well. He returns again to Jamaica to make his Masters a return for their kindness towards him.’
Caleb continued this ‘kindness’ by insisting that Billy should ‘take abode in the House until he can build for himself’ and be supplied with ‘shoes and other necessaries’ and ‘a reasonable supply of clothes’. The limitations of this ‘kindness’, however, were evident in the instruction that Billy be treated ‘in the like manner as if he was an indentured servant and that he has no wages’. Caleb Dickinson evidently hoped to obtain a skilled tradesman (in short supply on Jamaican plantations) without the usual costs. Rather surprisingly, the reference to ‘no wages’ is also crossed out in his draft letter, suggesting some level of uncertainty. Billy would have found himself working alongside other mixed-race people within the Dickinson household, most of whom had no prospect of emancipation. The next generation of the Dickinson family seems to have had few scruples about the sexual exploitation of enslaved African women. Caleb’s nephew Caleb III (no longer a Quaker) spent many years managing the Dickinson plantations, during which he produced five illegitimate children, all baptised in St Elizabeth, Jamaica.
‘It feels important, to remember these young African lives which were shaped, and in many cases shortened, by Quaker involvement in slavery.’
The Dickinsons and Goldneys were not alone in receiving African children into their Quaker households. The diarist Sarah Fox (née Champion) records her attempts to care for ‘poor Ned – a little innocent negro boy about 12 years old, who was sent over to my brother, but with whom the climate not agreeing, he was boarded out’. Her encounters with Ned during 1777 caused her much soul-searching. By the 1780s Sarah was a convinced abolitionist, despite her devotion to her brother Richard and sister-in-law Julia Champion (née Lloyd), who were both deeply implicated in South Carolina slavery. The unfortunate ‘Black Ned’ died in January 1778, just in time to thwart a plan to ship him back to Jamaica. According to Sarah, he resisted this journey since ‘he feared if he died on board ship the crabs would eat him, which would prevent his going to Heaven, where he said he should go to God and see his mother again’. Ned was buried in the Friends’ burial ground adjoining Friars Meeting House in central Bristol.
Caleb Dickinson had at least one African servant who became a valued member of the Dickinson household, travelling with his master between Bristol and the rebuilt country mansion at Kingweston, Somerset, which eventually became his preferred family residence. Jeffery is recorded as ‘Caleb’s Black Man’ in a letter from his elder brother regretting his death from smallpox in 1759. Ezekiel Dickinson, who lived in Wiltshire and was a devout member of Corsham Meeting, wrote praising Jeffery’s ‘late behaviour at Monks, particularly to thyself in his tender and affectionate behaviour… I believe thee mayst truly say thee hast lost a faithfull servant’.
The rest is silence. It feels important, nevertheless, to remember these young African lives which were shaped, and in many cases shortened, by Quaker involvement in transatlantic chattel slavery. Though the written evidence is fragmentary, creative memorialisation projects can help to restore wholeness and dignity to almost-forgotten individuals. Ros O Martin’s 2017 film Daughters of Igbo Women (now freely available on YouTube) has opened the way for a community-based project to remember Fanny Coker, another African servant, buried with her fellow-Baptists in a communal Bristol grave. Ros is a member of the Bristol Quaker Reparations Group. There will soon be an opportunity for Friends everywhere to contribute towards funding an appropriate memorial for Fanny Coker, as one more step on our slow Quaker journey towards reparative justice.
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