Roots Entwined: Inter-racial families in Yorkshire

Introduction

The following article is based on a chapter written for Tangled Roots: True Life Tales of Mixed and Multi-Racial Families, edited by Katy Massey, which was published in 2014. The book contained autobiographical chapters from 14 writers based in Yorkshire, to which Audrey Dewjee added a chapter looking at the long history of inter-racial families in the county. In her introduction, Katy Massey explained:

“I started collecting the real-life stories in Tangled Roots because when I was growing up in Yorkshire in the 1970s and 1980s I had no books to read that described the lives of families like mine…. After a career in journalism and a PhD in Life Writing, I was amazed to find that there is still little written, especially in the field of memoir and autobiography, about families like ours….

The book was Katy’s response, and in 2015 she edited a second volume of stories under a similar title, which contained contributions from 27 writers from different parts of Britain. These included some well-known names such as Charlotte Williams and Bernardine Evaristo.

               

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Roots Entwined: Inter-racial families in Yorkshire

By Audrey Dewjee     (January 2024)

London abounds with an incredible number of…black men who have clubs to support those who are out of place [i.e. out of work] and in every country town, nay in almost every village, are to be seen a little race of mulattoes, mischievous as monkeys, and infinitely more dangerous.

So wrote Phillip Thicknesse in 1788.  Thicknesse may have been exaggerating the numbers for effect, nevertheless, surviving records show that inter-racial families existed all around the country.  There may be a greater number nowadays, but mixed-marriages have taken place in Britain for hundreds of years.

Early parish registers record the baptisms and marriages of small numbers of Africans who settled in Britain from the 1550s onwards.  And from the early 1600s, after the setting up of the East India Company, similar records can be found for people from South and South East Asia.  London and the southern counties provide the earliest evidence of inter-racial marriages – for example, that of Samuel Mansur or Munsur “a Blackamoure” to Jane Johnson at St. Nicholas, Deptford in 1613.  Samuel may have been African, Arab or Asian.

18^th Century

Yorkshire eventually caught up with the trend.  One of the earliest marriages here took place on 12^th November 1732, at Thornton by Pocklington in the East Riding, when John Quashee wed Rebecca Crosby.^[1]I have presumed that John Quashee was African because of his surname. Others followed.  Henry Osman, who had been brought to England from India by a member of the Lowther family, married Anne Cook at Swillington in 1753.  At the time of his marriage, he was employed as a footman by Sir William Lowther, and he remained at Swillington until his death in 1781.  Henry and Anne had a number of children, many of whom married and stayed in the local area.

Despite the fact that racist commentators deplored inter-racial marriage in the press and gave such labels to the women involved as “the notoriously polluted and abandoned part of the sex”^[2]William Cobbett, in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, Vol. 24, (16 June 1904), col. 935., respectable English women married men of colour.  For example, Elizabeth Lawson, daughter of the vicar of Weaverthorpe, married Peter Horsfield, footman to Sir George Strickland, at Boynton in 1780.  The fact that these future husbands had skills or were in secure employment and therefore able to support a family, would have added to their attraction.

Yorkshire men also married African and Asian women.  James Doe and Parcira Derosa (who was described as “a widow and Chinese” at the baptism of her son William in 1773), were united in Ripon Cathedral in 1775.

Thirty-five miles away, and five months later, Adam Newland, formerly a Black servant at Newland Hall at Normanton, near Wakefield, and later a cabinet maker in York, married Mary Beal in the ancient church of St. Botolph in the village of Bossall.  Their son, William, born four years later, tragically died in infancy.

Possibly the earliest portrait of an inter-racial family in Britain was that of Amelia Newsham, her husband, who was said to be a Yorkshireman^[3]It was also claimed that Mr. Newsham came from Nottinghamshire., and two of their children.  Amelia was also known as “Harlequin”, which seems to have been a name applied to Africans in a similar manner to “Pompey”, “Scipio”, “Dido”, etc. The portrait, which had been in the possession of the Hunterian Museum, was destroyed by a bomb in World War 2 and an old photograph of it is all that remains.

Amelia had inherited albinism which made her of great interest to people in the 18^th century who did not understand why she had white skin.  She was born into slavery in Jamaica around 1748 and sent to Britain in 1753 with the intention of selling her for exhibition purposes in order to make a lot of money.  Baptised as “Amielia Harliegwin” in Exeter in April 1766, sometime later she married a Mr. Newsham with whom she had six children.  Eventually Amelia was able to exhibit herself, thus ensuring a secure income.  Olaudah Equiano was clearly fascinated by her.  He recorded her presence in his autobiography:

Soon after my arrival in London, I saw a remarkable circumstance relative to African complexion, which I thought so extraordinary, that I beg leave just to mention it: A white negro woman, that I had formerly seen in London and other parts, had married a white man, by whom she had three boys, and they were every one mulattoes…

In 1788 the surgeon John Hunter commissioned Johann Zoffany to paint their family portrait.

Making a marriage work is not always easy, but it can be even harder when the relationship is cross-cultural and/or disapproved of by the wider community.  However, I suspect that some of the early marriages may have escaped either or both of these problems.  Many of the African and Asian men who married local women had been here from an early age.  Henry Osman was brought here when he was just three years old, while John Yorke was about 13 or 14 when he arrived in the village of Marske in Swaledale.  Both spent much of their youth in this country and may well have been an accepted part of their local communities by the time they married; Henry at the age of 20 and John at 40.

At least 132 White descendants of John Yorke are currently living in various parts of the country, many of them in Yorkshire.  John’s story was discovered about 30 years ago, when descendants started compiling their family tree.

To my knowledge, no first-hand account of inter-racial family life in Yorkshire in the 18^th century has yet surfaced, but one African man has given us some idea of how it felt to be living in a small Yorkshire village.  In 1783, Scipio writing to John Wesley from his home in Sheriff Hutton said,

I have had nothing to make me unhappy, unless perhaps when I first came; everyone was gazing at me and talking of me; but now the novelty is over and I am at ease.

However, some people had a more difficult time.  In 1787, Elizabeth Jordison of Seaton Carew gave birth to a son whom she christened Barnard Jordison.  The father, “a native of Bengal,” who had been baptised by the name of Barnard Castle, was employed by John Bell of Newport in the North Riding of Yorkshire (since absorbed into Middlesbrough). The couple didn’t marry, perhaps because Barnard could not afford to support a wife and family.  Despite his unpromising start in life, Barnard junior did quite well for himself.  In the census of 1861, a few months before his death at the age of 74, he is listed as a farmer of 300 acres employing three labourers.  Barnard Castle’s family has been traced well into the 20^th century and perhaps continues to this day.

19^th Century

In 1823, Thomas Lee, “a fine sharp boy of colour” aged 9, who had been apprenticed to a chimney sweep named Joseph Haddock, was very badly treated by his master. Haddock was later prosecuted.  During the court case, it was reported that Thomas was the illegitimate child of an African woman who had obtained her livelihood by hawking small wares.  His mother had drowned 12 months previously in the goit^[4]Goit = a channel; part of a system of dams and channels that were dug to divert water from the river to power a mill. of Nether Mills in Leeds and his older sister had apprenticed him to Haddock.  After his rescue, Thomas was admitted to the workhouse hospital, where he was reported to have made a good recovery.

Ira Aldridge, the brilliant African American Shakespearean actor (famous for his portrayal of Macbeth, King Lear and Shylock, as well as Othello) married a Yorkshire lass in 1824, shortly after his arrival in this country.  Margaret Gill, who was several years older than Ira, was the daughter of a Northallerton stocking-weaver.  Despite Ira’s extra-marital affairs, some of which produced children, the marriage lasted until Margaret’s death in 1864.

Another wedding which took place in Ripon Cathedral, almost 70 years after Parcira and James Doe had tied the knot, was that of John Perry (an African American) and Sarah Ann Horn of Bramley near Leeds.  John had made the news the week before his marriage because of an amazing feat of endurance, which was reported in the Leeds Mercury of 20 January, 1844.

PEDESTRIANISM EXTRAORDINARY AT RIPON – John Perry, an athletic man of colour, concluded, on Tuesday morning last betwixt the hours of seven and eight o’clock, the arduous task of walking 1¼ mile every successive hour, for 1,000 hours, making an aggregate distance of 1,250 miles; a feat, we believe, that stands without parallel in the annals of pedestrian achievements.

Perhaps he did this for a bet, and his winnings gave him the means to marry his sweetheart.  Their family story is a sad one.  Sarah Perry died eleven months later perhaps in childbirth, or shortly after the birth of their son, John Francis Perry.  Little John went to live with his grandfather and aunt.  (A John Francis Perry died in Hunslet, Leeds, in 1857.  Possibly this was John and Sarah’s son.)

Obviously a great athlete, John then became a boxer, and two years after his marriage he was starting to make a name for himself.  Descriptions of his technique make him sound like a forerunner of Mohamed Ali.

Perry’s style of milling was pretty to watch.  Poised on his toes, he danced around his man, jabbed with consistency and accuracy and delivered his punches cleanly.  He was perfection so far as science was concerned.^[5]As recorded in Peter Fryer, Staying Power, Pluto Press, 1984, p.452.

However his success in Britain came to an abrupt end.  John became involved with some American fraudsters and, while on a boxing tour, he passed a forged note for them.  This resulted in prosecution, conviction and transportation to New South Wales.  Freed on ticket of leave after three years, he resumed his boxing career and became the heavyweight champion of Australia in 1849.^[6]More about the extraordinary life of John Perry can be found on this website near the end of the article by John D. Ellis about John Charles, a Black drummer in the 32nd Regiment of Foot. … Continue reading

The industrial revolution changed life for everybody in Britain, but perhaps the impact was harder for inter-racial families who had to make the transition from living in a village, where they were known to everyone, to survival in a large town.  George Yorke, grandson of John Yorke, went to live in Bradford where he raised his family and was employed at Bowling Iron Works.

Mixed-Heritage Children from overseas

Inter-racial families were also created half a world away by Yorkshiremen who went out to the Caribbean or India.  After retiring from his Jamaican plantation, William Place arranged for the manumission of his young son, “born of the body of a slave named Sherry Ellis”, and sent for him to join him in Yorkshire.  This took many months and by the time Thomas arrived his father was dead.  However, his aunt, uncle and cousins raised him and Thomas eventually became a farmer, and later a greengrocer at Bishop Auckland.  When he came of age, Thomas inherited his father’s land at Newton-le-Willows, near Bedale.  He married twice and children from his first marriage thrived until at least the mid-20^th century.

Henry Foster from Oughtershaw in remote Langstrothdale went to Jamaica where a descendant recorded that he married a “coloured” woman.  The couple had two daughters who, on one occasion, came to this country to visit their relations.^[7]Florence Foster, “Beckermonds in Langstrothdale,” The Craven Herald Ltd, Skipton, 1950, pp.14-18.

Other parents sent their children here to school or to find work.  When Thomas Browne returned to Whitby in 1802 with his wife and family, he brought along his cook “Black Nancy” and her two sons George and Edward.  Thomas was thought to be the father of Nancy’s children.  While they were here, Thomas arranged for Edward to be apprenticed to Gideon Smailes of Whitby, owner of a ship called the Competitor which traded with the West Indies.

White fathers frequently sent their mixed-heritage children “home” to school.  One such child was Eliza Raine, an Anglo-Indian, who was the first love of Ann Lister of Shibden Hall, when the two girls were at school together in York.  A copy of a letter sent by an English attorney in Jamaica to a London merchant in 1763 informs us of others who came here for their education:

I have taken the liberty of troubling you with the case of a mulatto boy who came in the Prince George…You [will] be pleased to send the said boy down to school at Knayton near Thirsk in the north part of Yorkshire, under the care of Mr. Addison who keeps a large school there…There is several boys from this Island now at that school.

20^th Century

From the latter part of the 19^th century, it seems that having a Black ancestor became something to be kept a family secret.  Perhaps this was because of the rise of scientific racism and the increase in prejudice that it created.

Francis Barber, who worked for Dr. Samuel Johnson as his butler-cum-secretary, had attended school at Barton in Yorkshire in his youth.  Dennis Barber, an elderly descendant, explained his family’s attitudes to S.I. Martin, author of Britain’s Slave Trade:

It was not a subject spoken about outside the family.  But we were made aware by our parents that our ancestor was Black and that we too could have dark-skinned children.

The stories were really between my mother and father.  My mother didn’t like to hear any talk about Francis Barber.  My father always raised it and always called him Mr. Barber.  My mother…used to turn round and say, ‘Look, don’t talk about that Black man in front of the children.’  Of course, as we got older, the big worry from my mother was if any of my sisters, when they got married, were going to have a Black baby.^[8]Britain’s Slave Trade, Channel 4 Books, 1999.

In later years, and especially in times of unrest, inter-racial couples faced some very harsh experiences.   For example, after the First World War, many of the Black and Asian sailors who had manned the merchant navy from 1914-18, suddenly found themselves in competition for work with returning White sailors who had been demobbed from the Royal Navy.  “Race riots” broke out in large ports around the country, particularly in Liverpool and South Wales in 1919, and Black sailors and their families were attacked in their own homes.  The fact that Hull also suffered seems to have been less noted by historians.  One weekend in June 1920 serious disturbances broke out and press reports detailed horrific scenes.  According to a local paper “hooligans” started “nigger hunts.”  Bricks were thrown and subsequently shots were fired.  Several people were injured.  Houses where Black people lived were ransacked and bedding was thrown out of the windows and set on fire in the street.^[9]Hull Times, 26 June, 1920. As Jacqueline Jenkinson has pointed out, although it was clear that members of the white mob were the aggressors, four men of colour were the only people charged in the Police Court the following Monday.^[10]Jacqueline Jenkinson, Black 1919: Riots, Racism and Resistance in Imperial Britain, Liverpool University Press, 2009.

In the poisonous atmosphere of these years, George White married Florrie Horner at Hull Register Office on 7 February, 1920.  Life, for them, can’t have been easy.  At the time of the riots, George and Florrie left for Grimsby.  Perhaps it was at this time that George obtained a gun for self-defence.  The marriage was not a happy one, with frequent quarrels being reported by neighbours.  When Florrie discovered that George was a bigamist with a previous wife and two children in Liverpool, she left him and moved to Cardiff.  She reported the fact that George owned a gun to the police, which resulted in him being sentenced to two months hard labour.  After his release from prison, George eventually discovered where Florrie was, and followed her.  On 5 August, 1921, he shot and killed her at work, in front of the customers at the Globe Cafe, before turning the gun on himself.

Chirag Din Chohan and his wife Florence had a much happier relationship.  They married in the 1920s, settled first in Harrogate and then moved on to Middlesbrough where they raised their three children.

During the Second World War, young mixed-heritage Yorkshiremen and women “did their bit”.  Captain Charles Henry Cheong (known as Harry) fought in Burma and was mentioned in despatches, but when he returned home and tried to find a job, he had difficulty getting interviews because of his Chinese surname.  When he changed it to Dewar, he was soon employed and he eventually became a headteacher.

Another casualty of the prejudice caused by scientific racism in the early years of the 20^th century, whose father’s story can also be read on this website, was Bertie Robinson Wray.^[11]http://historycalroots.com/bertie-robinson-a-black-footman-at-harewood-house/ and https://www.historycalroots.com/george-bertie-robinson-a-black-footman-at-harewood-house/  He enlisted in the RAF and was sent to serve in Italy at Caserta in the province of Campania.  While in Italy he met a young member of the WAAF and married her in the English Church in Naples.  The RAF helped to make the wedding memorable: the commanding officer supplied a car to take the bride and groom to and from the church, and the cook baked a four-tier, fully-iced and decorated wedding cake for them – something which would have been an impossible dream for anyone in sugar-rationed Britain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lilian, daughter of Barbados-born Marcus Bailey and his wife Lilian McGowan, who was of Irish descent, first obtained a job in a NAAFI [Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes] canteen.  After six weeks, she was asked to leave because her father was Black, despite the fact that he had served in the Royal Navy in the First World War.  Later, when she heard on the radio that the RAF had accepted West Indian recruits, Lilian applied to the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force and was accepted.   She became one of the first women in the WAAF to be qualified as an Instrument Repairer, and eventually rose to the rank of Acting Corporal.  In Hull, in 1943, she married tank driver Ramsay Bader who was also of dual heritage.  Ramsay’s Sierra Leonean father had served in the Army in World War I, and his mother was a Londoner.^[12]More information about Lilian and her family can be found on the website of the African Stories in Hull and East Yorkshire Project.  https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/marcus-bailey.html and … Continue reading

A more recent inter-racial family was formed when Elsie Kaye, daughter of the owner of a Huddersfield woollen mill, married Dr. George W. Brown in Halifax in 1937.  The couple had met as students at the London School of Economics.  Their first child, a son, was born in Huddersfield in 1938.  On the outbreak of war, Dr. Brown returned to the USA taking his family with him.  During their time in America, two daughters were born to complete the family, and Dr. Brown finalised and published his doctoral thesis, The Economic History of Liberia.^[13]For more information about Dr. George W. Brown in Liberia, see: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2022/07/13/excerpt-george-brown-and-firestones-liberian-empire-of-rubber/

In 1948, Mrs Brown, known professionally as Miss Kaye, returned with Vaikai to run the mill with her brother, Irvin Kaye.  Dr. Brown and the girls joined her in 1949, and the firm was divided into two firms by 1952.  Assisted by their three children, the couple successfully ran their half of Kings Mill, Kaye Brown Ltd., until their deaths in the late 1970s.  The mill was then sold for the nominal sum of £3 to four senior employees who ran it for a further ten years until their retirement.

Conclusion

Where did the descendants of all the earlier families go?  As members of inter-racial families will know, colour fades quickly if children and grandchildren have White partners.  Certain features such as curly hair and darker skin may turn up from time to time in later generations, but these signs are not usually recognised by mainstream society, and gradually the memory of a Black ancestor fades.

At the beginning of 2007, articles appeared in the newspapers about the Yorkshire name Revis.  Genetic evidence of an African ancestor had been found in seven people who share this uncommon Yorkshire surname.  The newspaper reports seemed to give two possible suggestions as to when the ancestor may have come to this country – as a Black servant in the early 18^th century or someone who arrived with the Romans.  However, on enquiry, the genealogist involved (who is also a geneticist) said that he believes the Revis ancestor arrived in the 12^th or 13^th century, probably returning with the crusaders.

There are many more stories like these in Yorkshire, and there will be many stories in other parts of Britain.  Some archivists and a few writers are making determined efforts to collect and publish them; Kathleen Chater’s Untold Histories, published in 2011, being a good example.

Tracing family history has become a very popular hobby.  A number of people now take DNA tests in order to find out more about their origins and many people are researching their family trees.  In so doing, more Yorkshire folk will discover that they have an unexpected Black or Asian ancestor.  Yorkshire “Roots” have been entwined (or tangled) more frequently and for far longer than many are aware of.