User:Battleofalma/Freedom seekers

Freedom seekers were enslaved people escaping captivity in the 18th century.

History
There were enslaved people in London in the 1600s and 1700s. Beginning in the 1650s, ship captains, merchants, government officials, planters and other, predominantly White British, people brought enslaved people from Africa, the colonies in the Caribbean and America, and India to London, the heart of the developing British empire.

Slavery in London was very different from slavery in the colonies, where forced, segregated labour in agriculture was the norm. In London (and elsewhere in Britain), enslaved people did work that was very similar to the local working classes, in the homes and workplaces of local people.

Many of the enslaved were children, brought to serve elite people as personal servants. Most of these had been abducted from their families in Africa, and they had then endured the Middle Passage. Then they were brought to Britain where they were treated as property: advertisements in newspapers offered them for sale, and they were required to work without pay.

But many of these people refused to accept their situation. Between the 1650s and the 1770s many hundreds of them escaped, and we know this because enslavers then published newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the capture and return of these Freedom Seekers. Often these short newspaper advertisements are the only surviving records of the existence of these people, and their presence in London. These adverts are a record of resistance to enslavement, showing people’s determination to be free, and in many cases to create lives for themselves in Britain.

Simon P. Newman ((University of Glasgow, and University of Wisconsin)

Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London is a book about Freedom Seekers in London between 1650 and 1704, and it contains examples of different kinds of people, and reconstructions of the stories of their lives and escapes (the book is freely available online, and either the whole book or short excerpts can be downloaded). The Runaways London project features a film and a freely available book by young London poets and artists who have creatively responded to the stories of London’s freedom seekers.

Runaway Slaves in Britain is an online database containing hundreds of these advertisements published between 1700 and 1780. It is possible to search the database to find different kinds of people and places. For example, users can find freedom seekers who escaped to or from Stepney in the East End, or people who had been born in Africa. The website also includes advertisements showing enslaved people who were offered for sale.

Secondary schools across London have been participating in a local history project that enables students to reconstruct the lives of 18th century Freedom Seekers and to share these important personal stories through wikipedia’s global platform.

Joseph Robinson
Public Advertiser, 11th March 1767

‘RUN away on Saturday Night, about Nine o’Clock, March 7, 1767, a (-) Man, named JOSEPH ROBINSON, bought of Governor Ellis in Georgia in the Year 1760, well known in the Parish of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate, about 5 Feet 5 Inches high, his Hair cut short, is well made, had on when he went away a light-coloured mixed Cloth Coat and Waistcoat, an under red

''Waistcoat, black Worsted Breeches, Silver Buckles in his Shoes, and a Silver Stock Buckle, speaks good English, and can write. If he should offer himself as a Servant, it is hoped no Gentleman will receive or employ him, he being the Property of Pickering Robinson, late of Devonshire Square, and now living in Paternoster Row, Spitalfields.''

N.B. Any Person who is aiding or assisting in the Escape, or endeavours to conceal or harbour the said (-) Man, will be prosecuted as the Law directs.

Masters and Commanders of Ships are desired not to take him on board.’

In the winter of 1760, Henry Ellis, the second Royal Governor of the colony of Georgia (1758-1760) retired from his position and returned to Britain from the Americas.

Soon after his arrival, he sold a young enslaved male servant that had accompanied him on the long voyage, to a man called Pickering Robinson. This young man came to be known as Joseph Robinson. In Georgia, as servant to the Governor, Joseph had resided in the newly established capital, Savannah. Ellis’ movements and activities prior to his Governorship provide a firm foundation for how Joseph came to be his servant.

Before being made Governor of Georgia, Henry Ellis was a well known navigator and slave trader.

Between 1750 and 1755, Captain Ellis sailed at least three times from Bristol to Anomabu and Cape Coast Castle (on the shores of what we today know as Ghana), as well as Sierra Leone. On board his ship, the Halifax, he carried hundreds of enslaved Africans to Jamaica and Antigua, before returning to Bristol.

CITE: VOYAGE ID 17263/ 17314/ 17365

At the same time, the ship, known officially as the Earl of Halifax after Ellis’ patron, also carried out a series of experiments for the Royal Society Ellis’ involvement went further than trading human cargo. In 1752 the Halifax formed part of a convoy of ships that requested supplies to build a new fort at Anomabu. Records confirm the intention to capture 40 slaves from the River Gambia to build the new fort, who would then be moved on to Cape Coast Castle.

Pickering Robinson
Pickering Robinson worked in Savannah Georgia from 1750 to 1758. He came to Savannah as a 24 year old expert in sericulture, employed by King George II on a significant wage, to help establish silk production in the area. Though he would certainly have become acquainted with Governor Ellis when he took office in 1758, His knowledge of silk production proved poor and he returned to England the same year.

Robinson was born in 1726 and married Mary in Walthamstow in 1753. He named the young man he purchased from Governor Ellis in 1760 after his uncle and benefactor, Joseph Robinson, who had bequeathed him land in Lincolnshire shortly before his voyage to the Americas in 1750.

As noted by Pickering in the advert, Joseph was well known in certain parts of London, particularly St Botolph’s parish in Bishopsgate. A document from St Botolph’s church dated the 11th July 1766 states that he was also baptised in this parish, as Joseph Robinson an adult male and, in the document, he provides a crucial detail - his age (25, so born 1741). Joseph made a personal choice to be baptised in a parish he did not live in but had become very familiar with, nearly a year before he absconded. Pickering’s suspicions that Joseph was being aided, assisted, concealed and harboured were, therefore, not without foundation.

Joseph was one of only a small percentage of the working population who could both read and write and after more than seven years in captivity, his spoken English had also become worthy of note. Along with his years of experience of domestic service in London and the Americas, on land and at sea, these skills would have made it easier for Joseph to find work. A fact that Pickering highlights when warning off other potential employers.

Pickering states that he and Joseph were ‘lately’ of Devonshire Square. Though no land tax records have yet confirmed that Pickering resided in this affluent part of the city, he did pay tax on a property located in the parish of Farringdon Without (Paternoster Row) from 1758, the year he returned, until the 1770s.

Pickering confirms that Paternoster Row was the location that the Robinson family were living in when Joseph ran away. On the 7th of March 1767, he took advantage of the late hour, when the chores were done and the household was settling down to sleep to slip out, unnoticed.