Black History Month: 6 October 2020
Ignatius Sancho was the first known Briton of African descent to have voted in an 18th Century general election. At the time, there were restrictive property-owning requirements that voters were required to meet, and only around 3% of the population qualified. Being an independent male property owner, owning a house and a grocery shop in London, Ignatius had the right to cast his vote for the Members of Parliament in both the 1774 and 1780 elections. He was nicknamed in his time as 'extraordinary' and became a symbol to the British abolitionists of the humanity of Africans and the immorality of the slave trade.
Ignatius was born in 1729 on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean, but his mother died not long after in the Spanish colony of New Granada. His father supposedly took his own life, rather than live as a slave. While living in Greenwich, John Montagu, the 2nd Duke of Montagu, was impressed by Ignatius' intellect and friendliness, and so encouraged him to read, while lending him books from his personal library. By the late 1760s, Ignatius had already become accomplished and was considered by many to be a man of refinement. Two years after his death, 'The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho' was published and is one of the earliest accounts of African slavery written in English by a former enslaved person.
Want to find out more about Ignatius Sancho? Click here for more information, or here to find out more about his letters.
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