Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho was born around 1729 on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. His mother died shortly after his birth and his father took his own life rather than live in slavery. The infant Sancho was taken to Greenwich, England, where he was given as a gift to three sisters who named him Ignatius Sancho — a name combining religious reference with a comic literary allusion.

The sisters, who believed that educating a Black person was dangerous and unnecessary, nevertheless found themselves unable to prevent the young Sancho from educating himself. He was befriended by the Duke of Montagu, who lent him books and encouraged his remarkable intellect. When the Duke died, his widow took Sancho into her household as a butler.

Sancho became one of the most celebrated figures in 18th-century London. He was a composer, writing music for theatre and publishing his own works. He was a writer of letters — his collected correspondence, published after his death, became a bestseller and went through five editions. He was a friend of Laurence Sterne, David Garrick and other leading figures of the age.

In 1774, Sancho opened a grocery shop in Westminster with his wife Anne. The shop became a meeting place for artists, writers and intellectuals. And in 1774, because he was a property-owning householder, Sancho became the first Black person to vote in a British election — casting his vote in the Westminster constituency.

Ignatius Sancho died on 14 December 1780, suffering from gout — a condition brought on by his love of food and drink, which he freely admitted. His Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, published posthumously in 1782, was one of the first works by a Black author to be widely read in Britain and helped fuel the abolitionist movement.