SLAVERY

SANCHO (IGNATIUS) Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, Printed for William Sancho, 1803

Footnotes

A LANDMARK IN PUBLISHING HISTORY: THE FIRST BOOK TO HAVE BEEN BOTH WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED BY A BLACK PERSON.

Ignatius Sancho (c.1729-1780), abolitionist, composer and actor, known at the time as "the extraordinary Negro", was born on a slave ship in the Atlantic bound for New Granada. At the age of two he was taken to England, and spent eighteen years as a slave in Greenwich before running away to work for the Duchess of Montagu and her family in Blackheath and eventually opening his own grocery shop in Westminster. He soon became prominent in the burgeoning abolitionist movement, and was "the first known person of African descent to vote in a British general election. As an independent male property owner, with a house and grocery shop on Charles Street, he had the right to cast his vote for the Westminster Members of Parliament in the 1774 and 1780 elections" (British Library website).

On his death in 1780, Sancho became the first African to be given an obituary in the British press, and two years later, Frances Crewe, a correspondent of Sancho (as was Laurence Sterne), edited 160 of his letters and published them in a two-volume edition with an anonymous memoir by Joseph Jekyll. The frontispiece comprised a portrait engraved by Bartolozzi after Gainsborough, who had painted Sancho along with the Montagus in 1768. The book was an immediate success, with more than 2000 subscriptions reflecting "the great range of Sancho's social circle: men and women, aristocrats, servants, artists, businessmen, country squires, and prominent politicians" (ODNB), and subsequent editions followed.

The fifth, the first one-volume edition, was published by his son, William Leach Osborne Sancho, who inherited the shop and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business.

Provenance: L.A.J. & M. Baker, bookplate. "Mr L.A.J. Baker, who lived in Blackheath, was a keen antiquarian and a member of several local history societies for many years. He amassed a considerable collection of books, maps, press cuttings as well as his own writings, which all pertained to Lewisham and Greenwich. Many of these were acquired by Lewisham Local Studies and Archives" (National Archives website).