Unearthed historical records lay bare prejudices faced by City of London’s black and ethnic women residents

‘All too often, women were reduced to a mere footnote in history, and black and Asian women are even less likely to feature in conventional histories’

Detail from ‘Chairing the Members’ by William Hogarth, 1758 (London Metropolitan Archives)

The lives of black and Asian women who worked and lived in the City of London from the 17th to 19th centuries have been uncovered in a new report.

Research commissioned by the City of London Corporation combed through parish and court records, newspaper adverts and previously published works to unearth details on the lives of 160 black and Asian women found to be living in the Square Mile for the first time.

The paper was published on Tuesday for the Celebrating City Women campaign, initiated by the City of London Corporation, which aims to better understand the City’s past and recognise remarkable women connected to the area.

Due to a lack of official records in the 17th and 18th century, locating the black and minority ethnic communities in Britain was a major challenge. It was even more challenging to identify a slave woman, said the report, as she may have been transported without a name in earlier history.

The erasure of African names may have begun when company workers or individual slave owners refused to refer to slaves by their given names. Researchers speculate this may have been due to their inability to pronounce foreign names.

English officials may also have assumed an English-sounding equivalent to African names for convenience. For example, the name Phibba or Fiba was recorded as Phoebe or Quaco recorded as Jack.

The report, written by Chihyin Hsiao, assistant professor of social history at National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan, also reveals that enslaved women were made to change their names to popular English ones at some point in their lives, and their last names were often replaced with names derived from their place of origin or after their master.

Only one African name was discovered - Beneba, a common female name referring to the date of birth in the Coromantee community in the Gold Coast of Africa, known today as Ghana. Beneba means Tuesday.

Some adult immigrants chose to change their names by converting to Christianity and baptising their children, perhaps in a bid to gain social recognition or relief provided to poor people by churches.

One Moroccan seamstress, Mary Fillips, converted from Islam to Christianity in 1597. Researchers suggest she did so to fit in with English society, and the “ceremonial purpose of baptism is significant in terms of rebranding one’s identity on foreign soil”.

But others were likely baptised according to their employers’ wishes, as is believed in the case of Mary Blakce, who was baptised in 1682.

Mary’s baptism was sponsored by several people, namely Mr James Lambert, Mr John Boweton, Mrs Anne Beavis and Mrs Elizabeth Sharply. It is believed that one of them was her employer and “it was their wish to hold such a ceremony”.

The report also cast more light on how people of mixed-heritage were perceived by wider British society. While there was no record of inter-racial marriage, several mixed-heritage children are found in the baptism registrar, suggesting it was not unheard of or forbidden.

However, the baptism of some mixed-heritage children appeared to have been arranged by their employers instead of their birth parents, which suggests that many of them were abandoned by their parents.

A famous mixed-heritage woman in the 18th century was Elizabeth Dido Belle, whose father was Sir John Lindsay and her mother a West Indian slave.

Elizabeth was brought to England to receive a formal education and lived with Lord Mansfield, who judged the famous Somerset case in 1772. Thomas Hutchinson, a former governor of Massachusetts, described Elizabeth as having “a very high cap, and her wool was much frizzled in her neck, but not enough to answer the large curls now in fashion”.

He noted that Lord Mansfield called her by her middle name and “has been reproached for shewing a fondness for her”.

Although Elizabeth was treated well throughout her life, these comments indicated a potentially degrading social situation and she was not a free person until 1793.

The report also detailed the lives of women who worked as domestic servants and sex workers, as well as those who were involved with petty theft and felony.

One woman, Ann Blackmore, appeared three times in the Old Bailey between 1800 and 1847. On the first occasion, she stole butter and was found guilty, whereas on the second occasion, she broke into the house of a Lewis Pesman and stole more household items.

Finally, she was indicted for manslaughter. By the time she was tried for this final crime, she appeared to be “in great distress and mentally unwell”. Researchers added that it was “uncertain” if the same Ann had committed all these crimes.

Caroline Addy, co-chair of the City of London Corporation’s Tackling Racism Taskforce, said: “Now more than ever, we see how assumptions about the past shape our beliefs about the present - that’s why this is the perfect time to discuss the unknown or forgotten history of BAME women in the City.

“While the prejudices they faced are shocking to us today, the report reveals a glimpse into the real lives these women lived. I hope it will inspire people to discover more about our shared history - however uncomfortable it may be at times.”

Wendy Hyde, chair of the corporation’s Culture, Heritage and Libraries Committee, added: “All too often, women were reduced to a mere footnote in history, and black and Asian women are even less likely to feature in conventional histories.

“This report does a fantastic job of drawing together what are at times tantalisingly brief records, to shine a light into who these women were, how they came to London and the lives they lived here.”