Edward Albert (c.1830-1892), James Buchanan (c.1806-1886), and their families

By Audrey Dewjee (first published: 1^st August 2024)

I have just read Black Victorians: Hidden in History by Keshia N. Abraham and John Woolf, published by Duckworth, 2022.  The Victorian Era is not my favourite era in terms of Black History, nevertheless I found this book riveting.  It is well-researched and beautifully written, and it makes an excellent introduction to British Black History for someone who is new to the subject.

Reading the chapter on Edward Albert reminded me of my own unfinished research on this man and his family, so I resumed my efforts and was rewarded with new information.

Edward Albert

I first came across Edward Albert in Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor in the late 1970s when I had just begun researching British Black and Asian History.  I was fascinated to read Edward’s account as recorded in the book – “I am married: my wife is the same colour as me, but an Englishwoman. I’ve been married two years. I married her from where she belonged, in Leeds.”^[1]London Labour and the London Poor, Vol 2, p.492 I immediately wanted to know more about his wife and her Black parent, especially as she appeared to have been born in my native county, Yorkshire.  The couple had a three-month-old baby whom Mayhew described as “the cheeriest little crowing, smiling ‘piccaninny’ I have ever seen.”

Edward Albert was born in Kingston, Jamaica around 1830.  At the age of nine, he joined the Royal Navy as a cabin boy and thereafter made his living as a sailor.  His story, as told to Henry Mayhew, was a very sad one.

In February 1851 Edward engaged to sail as head cook on the barque Medora on a voyage from Glasgow to California and thence to China, before returning to a port of discharge in the United Kingdom.

The Medora had quite a history.^[2]For more information see https://glasgowmuseumsslavery.co.uk/2021/02/08/the-medora-a-glasgow-sugar-ship/ Built in Sunderland in 1838, a year later she was purchased by a Scotsman, John Lamont, who was the owner of several plantations in Trinidad.  He used the ship to transport his sugar products to the Clyde.  The purchase of the ship, no doubt, was helped by the massive amount of  compensation Lamont received for almost 400 enslaved people (equivalent to well over £1 million in today’s money).

According to the Legacies of British Slave Ownership website, he received £15,954 7s 4d for 322 enslaved workers on three plantations on his own account, as well as a share in compensation with George Reid for people on two further plantations.^[3]https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/28141 (accessed 25/05/2024). The amount of compensation to a slave-holder for an enslaved person in Trinidad or British Guiana was far higher than that for someone in Jamaica or Barbados or other island colonies because the enslaved people were more valuable in those new territories.^[4]“In Trinidad and British Guiana the average was £50-60 for each enslaved person, versus £20-25 elsewhere. The British government found the average value in the 1820s in British Guiana for example … Continue reading

Lamont died in 1850, so it was the new owner of the ship who planned the voyage which sailed on 18^th February with Edward Albert on board.  Life was precarious for anyone on board sailing ships and especially in the wild seas around Cape Horn at the tip of South America, where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet.^[5]You can get a good idea how awful the seas were in this video, (especially starting at minute 36) https://www.facebook.com/100064949191579/videos/age-of-the-clipper-ship/699963258360035/ Freezing temperatures, icebergs and terrifying squalls were to be expected with huge waves lashing over the deck.  While rounding Cape Horn on this voyage, in June 1851, Edward Albert’s legs became frostbitten.  He described what happened next:

In the course of the next day after my limbs became affected, the master of the vessel, and mate, took me to the ship’s oven, in order, as they said, to cure me; the oven was hot at the time, a fowl that was roasting therein having been removed in order to make room for my feet, which was put into the oven; in consequence of the treatment, my feet burst through the intense swelling, and mortification ensued … I declare to you I can’t describe the agony I felt when my legs were burst.  I fainted away over and over again.

It was six weeks before the ship arrived at Valparaiso in Chile, during which time Edward lay in his hammock without any medical attention.  When the ship docked he was taken to the hospital where both his legs were amputated three inches below the knee.  He was 21 years old.

[The surgeon] gave me chloroform to ease the pain but it being too strong I lay in a trance so like death from ten o’clock to four in the afternoon.  They all thought me dead.  It is generally understood in hospitals that whenever a patient dies his coffin in prepared.  So it was with me and when the men lifted me into my coffin I came out of my trance and gave them a start.  So they ran off to the doctor and told him the dead man has come to life again.  When he came down, much surprised, he asked me how I felt and I replied I was very weak.  He then ordered me a glass of wine.  After I had drank the wine he said I had a strong constitution and would not die in a hurry.^[6]Brief Sketch of the Life of Edward Albert, pp.6-7.

The master of the Medora called to see him and Edward asked for the wages he was due for his service on the vessel and demanded his seaman’s register-ticket.  But the captain told him that he would not recover, that the ship couldn’t wait for him, and that he couldn’t discharge a dead man.  He added that as Edward had no friends there to inherit his money, he would only give the British Consul a little money with which to bury him.

Edward remained in the hospital for five and a half months acknowledging that if it wasn’t for the good treatment he received there, he wouldn’t have lived.  On being discharged from the hospital he visited the Consul, only to be informed that the captain had not left any money.  The Consul didn’t offer him any help either, and suggested he beg in order to pay for his lodging.

Edward then contacted Admiral of the Fleet Fairfax Moresby, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Station, who was based in Valparaiso where (according to Wikipedia) “his main responsibility was to protect British commercial interests in the face of unrest among the people of Chile.”  Moresby arranged for Edward to be sent back to Britain on HMS Driver, which had been the first steam ship to circumnavigate the world.  Launched in 1840, Driver had already been very busy.  Arriving in New Zealand in January 1846, she took part in the Hutt Valley Campaign fighting on the side of settlers against the indigenous Māori.

Edward Albert arrived in Portsmouth on 8^th May 1852 from where he went to London and subsequently to Glasgow in order to try and claim his wages from the owner of the Medora.  It is unknown whether he ever succeeded, but he had not done so by the time he told Mayhew in 1856,

I will disgrace the owners of that ship as long as they don’t give me what they owe me…I will never leave England or Scotland until I get my rights.

Edward also tried to gain compensation from the Merchant Seaman’s Fund to which he had been obliged to contribute every month out of his wages.  Unfortunately the Fund, as Dickens reported in Household Words in 1852, “after long mismanagement, has at length, by an Act of the present year, been sentenced to be ‘wound up’”.  As a result Edward received nothing.

Because of his disability it was difficult for him to find work.  When he went to Glasgow to try and collect his money, he opened a little coffee-house which he called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

I used to make all the sorts of cakes they have in shops.  I bought the shapes, and tins, and things to make them proper. [I had a] kind of apparatus [which boiled] water and coffee, and the milk and the tea, in different departments; but you couldn’t see the divisions – the pipes all ran into one tap, like…it cost me two pound ten [shillings].

He did very well and managed to save £42 in the first month, but the man who sold him tea and coffee and whom Edward trusted to keep his savings for him, stole his money, closed down his business, and left him with nothing.

Henry Mayhew interviewed Edward in July or August of 1856 by which time he was a crossing sweeper “in a principal central thoroughfare”.  Crossing sweepers performed a very necessary service at a time when the roads were full of horse droppings, but Edward only did this when the weather was cold enough to let him walk – “the colder the better”, he explained, because the cold numbed his stumps.  In warm weather, when he was unable to walk more than a mile a day, he took to begging, which he felt he had the perfect right to do as he had been denied what he termed “his rights” and left destitute.

Mayhew commented, “he generally sits while begging, dressed in a sailor shirt and trousers, with a black neckerchief round his neck, tied in the usual nautical knot … He always appears scrupulously clean.”  Edward placed a placard in front of himself, addressed to “KIND CHRISTIAN FRIENDS,” which briefly detailed the disaster that had befallen him, and continued, “As I have no other means to get a livelihood but by appealing to a generous public your kind donations will be most thankfully received.”

He also had printed an eight-page pamphlet, Brief Sketch of the Life of Edward Albert or the Dead Man come to Life again, which told his story. In Black Victorians: Hidden in History, Abraham and Woolf observe that “Those titular words, ‘to life again’ were crucial. Albert’s familial history was one of enslavement, and his own, one of dislocation and loss – yet Albert had life. By publishing his life story, he was undertaking a literary resurrection…”

The version Mayhew saw had been printed in Hull and featured a “comic” portrait of a black man “of the Jim-Crow tobacco-paper kind”, on the cover.  This image was later changed and on a subsequent version, printed in Sunderland, it had been replaced by a ship of the same type that Edward had worked on, on his final voyage.  [The whole pamphlet is available to view online via Google images.]

Ellen Buchanan, Edward Albert’s wife

As noted above, I was particularly interested in Edward’s wife because she was Black and born in Britain.  Mayhew described her as “a pleasant-looking ‘half-caste’”, but otherwise he recorded little about her.  Edward acknowledged to Mayhew,

I couldn’t get on to do anything without her.  Sometimes she goes out and sells things—fruit, and so on—but she don’t make much. With the assistance of my wife, if I could get my money, I would set up in the same line of business as before, in a coffee-shop.  If I had three pounds I could do it.

Mayhew described the family’s home:

a little parlour, in a dirty and rather disreputable alley running out of a court in a street near Brunswick-square…[which] was scantily furnished with two chairs, a turn-up bedstead, and a sea-chest. A few odds and ends of crockery stood on the sideboard, and a kettle was singing over a cheerful bit of fire.

Edward bemoaned the location of his home and the abuse he received from his neighbours.

There are a great many Irish in this place. I would like to get away from it, for it is a very disgraceful place,—it is an awful, awful place altogether. I haven’t been in it very long, and I want to get out of it; it is not fit.

I pay one-and-sixpence rent. If you don’t go out and drink and carouse with them, they don’t like it; they make use of bad language—they chaff me about my misfortune—they call me ‘Cripple;’ some says ‘Uncle Tom,’ and some says ‘Nigger;’ but I never takes no notice of ’em at all.

Edward continued,

I have one child, it is just three months and a week old.  It is a boy, and we call it James Edward Albert.  James is after my grandfather who was a slave…I am a Protestant.  I don’t know the name of the Church but I goes down to a new built church, near Kings Cross.

This information eventually enabled me to discover the baptism of James Edward Albert in 1856, and the fact that his mother’s name was Ellen.^[7]The family’s surname was incorrectly recorded in the St. Pancras Old Church parish register as Albright.  James Edward was born on 14^th June 1856 and baptised on 19 October  I could not find the marriage of an Edward Albert and Ellen in either Leeds or London, so there, for a time, my search for this family ended.

In 2006 I asked Kathy Chater for help and she sent me photocopies of the 1861 and 1871 census returns for the Albert family.  She could not find the entry for the family in 1881, only for James who was living in Bradford at the time.  [It turned out that this was because the family surname was wrongly transcribed in the 1881 census as “Alberti.”].  Kathy also informed me that according to the census records, Ellen was born in Manchester, not Leeds.  In fact, she was baptised in the Chapelry of Skelmersdale on 19^th June 1836, daughter of James and Elizabeth Buchanan, so when Mayhew met her, she was 20 years old.

At the time of the 1841 census she was living in Blackley Street, Manchester, with her mother Elizabeth who was listed as a hawker, and sibling John, aged 2.  Sadly John was buried ten days later.  By the time of the 1851 census, Ellen, aged 14, was employed as a weaver and lodging with a family named Clavering at 1 Albion Buildings, St. Jude’s District, Manchester.

Ellen and Edward had been a couple for two years when they met Henry Mayhew, but despite what Edward told Mayhew, they weren’t yet legally married.  Their wedding took place in Sheffield Cathedral on 11^th June, 1861, by which time they had had two more children who both died in Sheffield in this same year.  At the time of their marriage, they were residing at 22 Spring Street.

The family of Edward and Ellen Albert

Black Victorians: Hidden in History, only tells part of Edward and Ellen’s story.  The couple went on to have 11 children, seven of whom survived into adulthood.  Born in various parts of the country where Edward must have gone in search of work – these were, James Edward (1856, London); Sophia (1857, Isle of Wight) died 1861; Eliza Ellen (1860, Manchester) died 1861; Jane (1862, Edinburgh); twins Mary and Joseph (1865, Newcastle upon Tyne) both dead by December 1866; Henry (1867, Newcastle); Esther (1870, Newcastle); Edward (1872, Newcastle); Thomas Frederick (1875, Bradford) and Mary (1878, Bradford).

Clearly Ellen was a very capable woman.  She gave birth to, and raised, many children while at the same time assisting a husband with severe disabilities and coping with their frequent moves from town to distant town in many parts of the United Kingdom.  She also seems to have held jobs outside the home.  In 1871 her occupation was listed as “general servant”.

Despite all the travelling around, the family appear to have remained in Newcastle from at least 1865 to 1872, and in Bradford from 1875 to 1878.  Are there records of any of them in local archives or contemporary newspapers?  What employment did family members find in these cities?

In the 1881 census, the family was scattered.  Edward and young Thomas were living in a lodging house in Blackburn.  Ellen was living in Preston with four of the children – Esther, Edward, Mary, and 20-year-old Jane, as well as Jane’s husband.  James was still living in Bradford.

In 1891, the family was living in Preston.  Edward senior is listed on the census return as Head of the family, but he was actually staying in Redruth, Cornwall on the night of the census.  The family in Preston comprised Ellen and four children – Henry, Edward, Thomas and Mary.  By now, Henry was a blacksmith, Edward and Thomas were cart drivers, and Mary was still at school, although she would be due to leave in the summer.  Esther was married and living next door with her husband, John Downham.

Edward Albert died of bronchitis in Falmouth, Cornwall on 28^th July, 1892, aged 62 or 63.  He is listed as a merchant seaman on his death certificate.  Ellen Albert does not appear to be listed on the 1901 census, so it is likely she died in the intervening years.  Her date and place of death are as yet uncertain, though an Ellen Albert “aged 56” died in Preston early in 1901 which very likely was her.  Perhaps the person recording her death had no idea of her real age, which would have been 65.

James Buchanan

When I first read the story in London Labour and the London Poor, I was also intrigued to find out more about Edward Albert’s parents-in-law, and discover which one was of African ancestry.  On Ellen’s baptism record they were listed as James and Elizabeth Buchanan.  A chance find on a family history forum some years ago led me to further information about Ellen’s father.^[8]Recorded by “SussexPat” on Family Tree Forum, 1 February, 2012.

On the 1841 census, James Buchanan wasn’t listed with Elizabeth and their two children.  In  1850, when he married Catherine Connor, his occupation was given as “hawker”.  On the 1851 census, he is recorded as living at 5 York Street, Leeds, with Catherine and her four children from a previous marriage.  James’s occupation was “labourer” and he was said to be aged 45 and to have been born in Antigua.  Catherine’s occupation was listed as “at mill”.  I have been unable to find James on the 1861 census or on the one taken in 1871, but there is a death record for a Catherine Buchanan in Leeds, early in 1871, which I presume was his wife.

James remarried in York in 1874, his new wife being Mary Williams.  The 1881 census gives their address as 9 Kings Yard, Walmgate, York.  James’s occupation is given as “race card hawker”, his age is 73 and he is now said to have been born in Africa.  Mary, aged 64, was born in Rawmarsh, Yorkshire, and living or staying with the couple was James’s grandson, Henry Albert, born Newcastle and aged 14. Between 1876 and 1886, the York Races were only held twice a year – on two days in May and three days in August, so I wonder how did James make a living selling race cards?  Did he sell race cards at other race meetings as well?

James Buchanan, race card seller, died in York on 14^th July, 1886 and he was buried two days later.  His wife Mary died the following year.

There is still a great deal more to be discovered about James.  Where exactly was he born?  Was he born in Africa and taken to Antigua, or was he born in Antigua and later presumed to have been born in Africa?  When, why and how did he come to Britain.  I hope one day we may be able to find out more about his life.

Later generations of the Albert / Buchanan family

Baby James Edward Albert grew up to become a glassmaker and then a dyer, but sadly he died in 1882, aged only 26.  Most of the other surviving children married and founded families.  At some point, the family name was changed from Albert to Alberts.  Photographs exist of the two youngest children.  Thomas became a gardener at Lancaster Castle and was photographed along with his workmates; while two portraits of Mary (born 1878) and living in Preston, have also survived.

Thomas subsequently became a comedian and performed with a group of entertainers on the beach at Morecambe.

Like her brother, Thomas, Esther Albert also became an entertainer, as did her daughter Agnes Downham at a later date. In 1896, Esther and a fellow performer, were hauled up before the stipendiary magistrate for allowing their young children to appear on stage during the performance of a play.  They were appearing in Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Rotunda Theatre, Liverpool at the time.  Charles Harrington, manager of the company, was charged with having permitted such action.  Harrington explained that the reason they were on stage was because their mothers didn’t like leaving them in their lodgings, and that he had nothing to do with the children.  The magistrate warned Harrington that he was liable to a heavy fine for allowing them to take part in the play, but ultimately he dismissed the case with a caution.

In the 1921 census, Agnes was still living with her parents in Blackburn and working as a weaver in a cotton mill but, sometime before 1938, she had moved to London and embarked on a performing career.  She married John Edward London in the early months of 1938 and on the 1939 Register she was listed as living with him at 80 Lambs Conduit, Holborn, and her occupation was given as “dancer in a night hall”.

Jack London

Agnes’s husband, John Edward London, was an extraordinary character.  Better known as Jack London, he had won both silver and bronze medals for Britain in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam.^[9]He won the silver medal in the 100 metres and the bronze in the 4 x 100 relay.  Jack also competed in high jump and shot put events at other championships. Born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana) on 13^th January 1905 he came to Britain with his family at the age of 3 months.  At the time of the games, Jack was a medical student at Kings College London.  There is an interesting article about him on their website.   https://www.kcl.ac.uk/alumni-voices-the-life-of-pioneering-olympics-athlete-and-kings-alum-jack-london

Jack was the first British sprinter to utilise starting blocks.  He was trained by the renowned Sam Mussabini until Sam’s death, and then by Albert Hill.  Described as a superb natural athlete, Jack’s athletic career came to an end in 1931 following a leg injury the previous year.

Jack left his medical studies at Kings College in 1929 in order to pursue a career in the entertainments industry.  He achieved success as a pianist and was a member of the original cast of Noel Coward’s Cavalcade in 1931.

Jack made use of his varied and extensive life experiences to help others.  Members of his extended family say that in World War 2 he served as an air raid warden and medic; and in 1949 he passed on his athletics know-how in a book entitled The Way to Win on Track and Field. Towards the end of his life he worked as a porter at St. Pancras Hospital in London.  He died, aged 61, on 2^nd May 1966, as the result of a brain haemorrhage.

Descendants’ service in Two World Wars

Like many other Black and inter-racial families in the first half of the 20^th century, the descendants of Edward Albert and James Buchanan served in different capacities in the First and Second World Wars.

Thomas Albert’s son, Thomas junior (below left), served in the Army in World War 1, while his younger brother, Alfred (below centre) served as a Sergeant in the Parachute Regiment in World War 2.  Captured at Arnhem in September 1944, Alfred became a prisoner of war until released by the Americans on Easter Monday, 1945.  One of Edward’s great-grandchildren, also named Alfred (below right), was a driver in the Royal Army Service Corps attached to 6 H.A.A. Regiment, Royal Artillery.  He died in Singapore on 15 March, 1942, aged 20 and is buried there in Kranji War Cemetery.

 

Overt racism in the early years of the twentieth century caused problems and a great deal of distress and hurt for many people of dual heritage.  Some of those affected felt the need to play down their Black ancestry in order to live an easier life.  Thankfully, today, individuals and families are proud of their Black ancestors and keen to celebrate their resilience and achievements.

The life stories of Edward Albert and Henry Buchanan and their extended families live on, not only in archives and parish records, but in the memories and lives of their many present-day descendants, who now number over 100.

How many more such family stories are waiting to be unearthed and told?  The hidden history of Black and Asian families in Britain goes back much further than the Victorian era, and every one of their stories matters.