Ignatius Sancho

Ignatius Sancho was the first black Briton known to vote in a parliamentary election – that happened in 1774. He became something of a celebrity in 18th-century London.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. Today we
are going to talk about Ignatius Sancho, who, among a
number of other firsts, was the first black Britain to

(00:23):
vote in parliamentary election. That happened in seventeen seventy four.
He became something of a celebrity in eighteenth century London,
but documentation of his life, especially his early life, is
a little bit spotty. Today, first we should talk a
little bit about the world that Ignatius Sancho lived in.
During his lifetime, England's population grew from about six and

(00:46):
a half to about seven million people, and somewhere between
fifteen thousand and twenty thousand of them were black. Most
of England's black population lived in cities, with two thirds
or more living in London. But these embers are really
really approximate. The first British census wasn't conducted until eighteen
o one, so these are definitely estimations. Slavery was legal

(01:09):
and practiced in England, so some of this population that
we're talking about was enslaved, many of England's black population
worked as household staff. Wealthy people considered it fashionable to
have specifically black household help, whether enslaved or free. One
trend was to have a black valet or maid who
acted as a personal assistant or a traveling companion, as

(01:33):
well as a conversation piece for other white aristocrats. I
said valet instead of valet, because I've been watching a
lot of Downton Nattie. Yeah, that's how you do. Of course,
regardless of whether they were free or enslaved, not every
black person in England was doing domestic work. Many were
or had been sailors, and many former sailors worked as
laborers or doc workers. Black workers also took industrial jobs

(01:56):
in cities, including things like processing and repackaging. Import had
goods like sugar and tobacco which had been grown in
the America's using enslave labor. Eighteenth century England was also
home to black performers and musicians, as well as black
music teachers and composers. Although some were recruited or conscripted
for things like regimental bands, it wasn't particularly common for

(02:18):
black performers to gain access to other white ensembles or
to white performance spaces. Instead, many black musicians performed at
home and within an evolving black social scene, and the
words of a seventeen sixty four article in the London
Chronicle quote among the sundry fashionable routes or clubs that
are held in town, that of the blacks or the

(02:40):
Negro servants is not the least. On Wednesday last no
less than fifty seven of them, men and women supt
drank and entertained themselves with dancing and music consisting of violins,
French horns and other instruments at a public house in
Fleet Street till four in the morning. No whites were
allowed to be present, for all the performers were all black.

(03:00):
While most of England's black population had come or been
brought from the America's and the Caribbean, some had arrived
from Africa. This included diplomats and dignitaries from African nations,
and students whose families had sent them to English universities
to study. All of this together meant that England's black
population in the eighteenth century was predominantly male. It was

(03:22):
not uncommon for free black men to marry working class
white women During Ignatius Sancho's lifetime, England was also the
dominant force and the trans atlantic slave trade. Slaveships operated
from numerous British ports, including London, and while Ignatius Sancho
was alive, the two largest slave ports were Bristol and Liverpool.

(03:42):
A vast amount of British wealth came directly from this
trade and from goods produced in the Caribbean and the
Americas using enslaved labor. A movement for the abolition of
slavery and the slave trade started to evolve in Britain
during Sancho's lifetime, although formal organizations with the goal, including
the Sons of Africa, were not established until after his death. However,

(04:05):
in seventeen seventy two, William Murray, the first Earl of
Mansfield and the Lord Chief Justice of Britain, issued a
ruling in the Somerset Case which ruled the enslaved people
who escaped their enslavement in England could not be captured
and returned to slavery abroad. Although many enslaved people living
at the time interpreted this as having ended slavery entirely,

(04:27):
its real effects were much more limited than that, and
we talked about this ruling previously in our episode three,
Astonishing bells Ignatious Sancho had connections to all of this history,
but as we noted, some of the details are spotty.
Brief glimpses of his last few years survived thanks to
some published letters. We're going to talk about those letters
more later, but beyond that, his first biographer was Welsh

(04:50):
barrister and politician Joseph Checkel, whose brief account of Sancho's
life was published with the letters. For the first several
printings of these letters, this biography was published anonymously. Jekyll's
name was finally included in the fifth edition, which came
out in eighteen oh three. Joseph Jekyl was born in
seventeen fifty four, which would have made him about twenty

(05:11):
six when Sancho died, and in the years after Sancho's
death he became a member of Parliament. In terms of
when both men were living, Jackal studied at Oxford in
the late seventeen sixties and was called to the bar
at Lincoln's Inn in London in seventeen seventy eight. During
those same years, Sancho was living and working in London,

(05:31):
including at a grocery that became a gathering place for
writers and musicians and a fashionable place for affluent people
to be seen shopping because of the novelty of its
black proprietor. So it's definitely within the realm of possibility
that these two men did know each other, or that
they at least met. And we do have a surviving

(05:51):
letter from Sancho's son, William, who wrote to Jekyl to
thank him for some service to their family and for
some corrections. That's his word, and that's probably in reference
to footnotes that appear in the eighteen or three edition
of Sancho's Letters. So it's possible that Jackal's knowledge of
Sancho's life came from Sancho himself or from his family.

(06:12):
But a lot of what he describes is really impossible
to corroborate, and some of it just contradicts documentation that
does exist. Jackal also doesn't mention some of the most
notable parts of Sancho's life, while also including other details
that seem pretty improbable. Also, it's clear that in writing
and publishing this biography, Jekyll was trying to contradict racist

(06:35):
ideas that were used to justify the institution of slavery,
instead showing Sancho as a human being withinnate worse, here
is a quote. He who surveys the extent of intellect
to which Ignatious Sancho had attained by self education, will
perhaps conclude that the perfection of the reasoning faculties does
not depend on a peculiar confirmation of the skull or

(06:58):
the color of a common integument. In defiance of that
wild opinion which says a learned writer of these times
restrains the operations of the mind to particular regions, and
supposes that a luckless mortal may be born in a
degree of latitude too high or too low for wisdom
or for wit. So to add a little explanation to that,

(07:20):
the learned writer of these times that he references was
Samuel Johnson, who was writing about John Milton when he
made that comment. And as a side note that e.
Ten oh three edition of Sancho's Letters also included this
statement quote. Dr Johnson had promised to write the life
of Ignatius Sancho, which afterwards he neglected to do, and

(07:41):
it was accordingly written by Mr jekyll An imitation of
Dr Johnson's style. In other words, Joseph Jekyl thought Ignatius
Sancho was notable enough to have been written about by
Samuel Johnson, regardless of whether Johnson ever specifically said that.
At the same time, even though Jackal seems too have
been motivated by reinforcing the intrinsic humanity of a black

(08:03):
man living in eighteenth century England and dispelling racist ideas,
he also repeats some of the day's racist stereotypes about Africans.
That makes it hard to figure out which parts of
his account are real and which are exaggerated, And at
this point it is just not possible to know where
any of his information came from. Having gotten through all

(08:24):
that context, we will get to what we know, or
at least what we think we know, about Ignatius Sancho's
life after a sponsor break. Joseph Checkel's biography describes Ignacious
Sancho as being born on a slave ship in seventeen

(08:44):
twenty nine, en route from Guinea and West Africa to
Cartagena and Columbia. This very earliest moment in his account
of Sancho's life is also the very first thing that
seems to be undermined by the actual historical rec heard
because there was not a ship that made that particular
voyage in seventeen twenty nine. For his part, in a

(09:07):
letter written in seventeen eighty, Sancho described himself as quote
born in Africa that suggested that he was or at
least believe that he was born in Africa. Jackal goes
on to say that Sancho was named Ignacious at his baptism,
which was performed by the bishop, but he doesn't really
elaborate on what might have prompted a bishop to baptize

(09:28):
an enslaved baby. According to Jekyl, Ignatius's mother died while
he was still a baby, and his father took his
own life rather than being enslaved. Then, when Ignacious was
between two and three, his enslaver took him to England
and gave him to quote three maiden sisters resident at Greenwich.

(09:48):
According to historian Anne Dingsdale, this may have been Elizabeth,
Susannah and Barbara Legg, who lived in Blackheath, which is
adjacent to Greenwich. That is the right number of sisters
and roughly the right location, but this is still conjecture.
Another conjecture is that the young Ignacious Sancho is depicted
in the painting Taste in High Life Bypath podcast subject

(10:10):
William Hogarth. That painting was completed in the seventeen forties
and it satirizes upper class women in their fashion choices.
Seated in a chair. On the left side of the
canvas in this painting is a black page. The Yale
Center for British Art describes this identification as this page
and the painting as Ignatious Sancho as traditional but implausible. Listen,

(10:35):
everybody's always said it, but it really doesn't make any sense.
Jackal also says these three sisters were the ones who
gave Ignacious the last name of Sancho because they thought
that he resembled Don Quixote, Squire Sancho Panza. In Spanish,
ponza means belly, and it stems from the Latin word
for paunch. This makes Sancho's name a little bit complicated.

(10:58):
It is the name he used his whole life, and
later on he called his daughters his sent Sinetta's, but
it was a name that was given to him as
an insult because of his weight. Magnatius Sancho described his
early years this way in a letter to Lawrence Stern,
the author of the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy
gentleman quote, the first part of my life was rather unlucky,

(11:20):
as I was placed in a family who judged ignorance
the best and only security for obedience. A little reading
and writing I got by unwearied application. The latter part
of my life has been, through God's blessing, truly fortunate,
having spent it in the service of one of the
best and greatest families in the Kingdom. My chief pleasure
has been books philanthropy. I adore. The best and greatest

(11:43):
family seems to be the House of Montague, beginning with John,
second Duke of Montagu. The Duke had previously been Governor
of Jamaica, and one of his residences in England was
Montague House in Blackheath, just across from the leg Sisters.
Earlier in his life, the Duke had reportedly funded the
education of Francis Williams, an enslaved man from Jamaica, although

(12:05):
Williams's attendance at Cambridge is not actually documented. The Duke
seems to have taken an interest in Sancho, giving him
books and encouraging him in his studies. The Duke died
in seventeen forty nine, and it seems that sometime after
that the three sisters that we mentioned earlier threatened to
send Sancho to the Caribbean. Sancho went to Montague's widow,

(12:28):
lady Mary, Duchess of Montague for help and Jackal's words.
When she refused, he quote procured an old pistol for purposes,
which his father's example had suggested as familiar and had
sanctified as hereditary. In this frame of mind, the futility
of remonstrance was obvious at that point. The Duchess hired

(12:48):
Sancho as a butler, and he worked with her until
her death in seventeen fifty one. In her will, she
bequeathed him seventy pounds, along with an annuity of thirty
pounds per year. Sancho used this money to try to
make his own way in London. He may have tried
a career on the stage, appearing in Shakespeare's Othello and
Afribans Orinoco, but according to Jekyl quote, a defective and

(13:11):
incorrigible articulation rendered it abortive, which was a roundabout way
of saying he didn't work out with that because he
had a speech disorder. Sancho's tastes outstripped his income in London, though.
This is where Jekyl describes his behavior as quote a
disposition of African texture. But really none of this seems

(13:31):
particularly unusual for a twenty two year old living as
a freeman with some money of his own. For the
first time, he enjoyed himself with cards and theater and women,
before realizing that he could not support that kind of
lifestyle on his annuity. He once again turned to the
House of Montague, this time George, Duke of Montague and
Earl of Cardigan, whose wife Mary was the daughter of

(13:53):
the late John and Mary Montague. The details here are
a little bit sketchy, but he was most likely employed
as George's valet. On December seventeenth, seventeen fifty eight, Ignatious
Sancho married An Osborne, described as a black woman from
the West Indies. They had at least six children together,
William known as Billy, Kitty, Fanny, Lydia, Mary, and Elizabeth

(14:16):
known as Eliza. We don't know much at all about Anne,
but we do know from Sancho's letters that she was literate,
that she had a brother named John, and that their
two families were close. It's also clear from Sancho's letters
that he truly dearly loved his wife and children. Sancho
continued to work as part of the Montague household staff
after he got married. In seventeen sixty eight, he had

(14:39):
his portrait painted by Thomas Gainsborough, who was one of
Britain's most fashionable and renowned artists in the eighteenth century.
This happened in Bath when Gainsboro came to do a
portrait of Lady Elizabeth Montague, who was George and Mary's daughter.
Even though Sancho was working as household staff at this point,
he is not wearing livery in the portrait, and he's

(14:59):
using the hand than the waistcoat pose that was common
in portraits of the upper class in the eighteenth and
nineteen centuries. Today, that portrait is in the collection of
the National Gallery of Canada. By the time he was
in his forties, Sancho's health made it difficult for him
to continue working in domestic service. He had asthma and gout,
and the gout in particular became increasingly painful and debilitating,

(15:22):
so in seventeen seventy three the family gave him a
small annuity to help him start a grocery store, which
he ran and managed with the help of his wife,
and another example of how eighteenth century England was deeply
connected to slavery. The most important products in his stock
were tobacco, sugar and tea, all of which were being
grown through the use of enslaved labor. The grocery was

(15:44):
at number twenty Charles Street in Westminster, and while the
building itself is now the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the
shop's former location is marked with a historical plaque today.
In addition to selling goods, Sancho also made it into
something of a literary salon, hosting discussions among prominent writers
and musicians. Regular visitors may have included formerly enslaved abolitionists

(16:07):
Autoba Cuguano and O Lauda Equiano. Known visitors included aspiring
writer George Cumberland, politician Charles James Fox, antiquary Richard Payne Night,
and artist John Hamilton's Mortimer. As we noted earlier, the
grocery also became something of a tourist attraction, with wealthy people,
making it a point to shop there because of its proprietor,

(16:28):
known as the remarkable Negro. In other words, Sancho had
assimilated into middle class British society to the point that
he was able to have his own shop, in his
own home and all these connections, but he was still
definitely an outsider within that society. Joseph Jekyl describes the
grocery this way quote A commerce with the muses was
supported amid the trivial and momentary interruptions of a shop.

(16:51):
The poets were studied and even imitated, with some success.
Two pieces were constructed for the stage. The theory of
music was discussed, published and dedicated to the Princess Royal,
and painting was so much within the circle of ignatious
Sancho's judgment and criticism that Mortimer came often to consult him.
Such was the man whose species philosophers and anatomis have

(17:13):
endeavored to degrade as a deterioration of the human And
such was the man whom fuller, with a benevolence and
quaintness of phrase, peculiarly his own accountess God's image, though
cut in ebony, since he owned the grocery store in
his home. Sancho was eligible to vote in the British elections,
which at the time were open only to male property holders.

(17:34):
That was, of course, a tiny, tiny fraction of the
British population. Sancho voted in seventeen seventy four, making him
the first black Britain known to do so, and he
voted again in seventeen eighty. Also in seventeen eighty he
witnessed the anti Catholic Gordon Riots, something that he wrote
about in his letters toward the end of his life.
These letters were really the primary way that Sancho kept

(17:57):
up with his enormous social circle. The a client in
his health had made it difficult, too impossible for him
to go visit people. In addition to his general correspondence,
he also wrote letters to newspapers and to public figures,
many of them advocating for the abolition of slavery. His
last letters to friends and family make frequent mentions of

(18:17):
illness and pain, and visits from doctors. Ignatia Santo died
on December fourteen, seventy He was buried at St Margaret's,
Westminster on December sevent In addition to his other firsts.
He was the first person of African descent to have
an obituary published in the British newspapers. Although Joseph Jekyl's
biography is the source of a lot of the information

(18:39):
that we've mentioned so far, we get a better sense
of Ignatia Sancho's own thoughts and personality through his letters,
and we'll talk more about that after we first have
a sponsor break. After Ignatia Sancho died, his son William
took over the Growth Street before eventually becoming a librarian

(19:02):
for naturalist Joseph Banks and also opening a bookshop that
made William Sancho England's first known black bookseller, and since
he published some of his father's work as well as
an edition of Voltaire, he was also England's first known
black publisher. William Sancho also worked with Francis Crewe, who
had been one of ignatius correspondents, on publishing a collection

(19:25):
of his father's selected letters after his father's death. In
cruse words, she was motivated by quote the desire of
showing that an untutored African may possess abilities equal to
a European and the still superior motive of wishing to
serve his worthy family. Sancho had actually become publicly known
for his letter writing while he was still living, thanks

(19:47):
to an exchange of letters with author Lawrence Stern. A
seventeen sixties six letter that Sancho wrote to Stern and
then three letters that Stern wrote back to Sancho were
included in the Letters of the Late Reverend Lawrence Stern
to His Most Intimate Friends that was first published in
seventy Sancho wrote this letter after reading Stern's job's account

(20:10):
of the Shortness and Troubles of Life, which included a
passage about slavery being a bitter draft. Sancho's letter to
Stern was a little like a fan letter, but it
was also a request for Stern to take up the
issue of slavery more powerfully in his own writing. We
read a bit of this letter earlier in the episode.
Beyond what we already read, Sancho went on to talk

(20:31):
about how much he appreciated the character of Uncle Toby
interest from Shandy, before saying, quote, consider how great a
part of our species, in all ages down to this,
have been trod under the feet of cruel and capricious
tyrants who would neither hear their cries nor pity their distresses.
Consider slavery what it is, how bitter a draft, and

(20:52):
how many millions are made to drink of it. From there,
Sancho went on to say that none of his favorite
authors had ever quote drawn a tear in favor of
my miserable black brethren, the only exceptions being Stern and
the author of Sir George Ellison. That's the History of
Sir George Ellison, which was published in seventeen sixty six

(21:13):
by Sarah Scott. Then Sancho went on to say, quote,
I think you will forgive me. I am sure you
will applaud me for beseeching you to give one half
hour's attention to slavery as it is at this day
practiced in our West Indies. That subject, handled in your
striking manner, would ease the yoke perhaps of many. But
if only one, gracious God, what a feast to a

(21:35):
benevolent heart. Stern, to reply to this, began quote, there's
a strange coincidence, Sancho, in the little events as well
as in the great ones of this world. For I
had been writing a tender tale of the sorrows of
a friendless, poor negro girl. And my eyes had scarce
done smarting with it when your letter of recommendation, in
behalf of so many of her brethren and sisters came

(21:57):
to me. But why her brethren or yours, Sancho, anymore
than mine. Stern's reply went on to say, in part quote,
but tis no uncommon thing, my good Sancho, for one
half of the world to use the other half of
it like brutes, and then endeavor to make them so.
For my part, I never look westward when I am

(22:18):
in a pensive mood at least, but I think of
the burthens, which are brothers and sisters? Are they're carrying?
Sterns letter to Sancho was circulated in abolitionist literature after
it was published, and the same was true of Sancho's
own letters. Sancho also seemed to pattern his own writing
style after Sterns and Tristram Shandy, using lots and lots

(22:38):
of dashes and something of a wandering style. There's been
some debate among literary critics about whether this was a
sort of super fans fawning mimicry of their favorite author
style or not Sancho was definitely a huge fan of Stern,
even owning a cast of a statue representing Stern's head,
but it could also just be Sancho's own genuine voice
and possibly a written an approximation of how he actually spoke.

(23:03):
These letters that Santa wrote are candid, rye ironic, sometimes
a little suggestive, and often self deprecating. Here's an example
from a seventeen seventy seven letter to artist and printmaker
John B. Hugh, who was a clerk on the Board
of Control. Sancho writes about having been ill and about
how the gout in his hand was making even writing painful,

(23:26):
and then an ink blot fell on the page. He wrote,
I hope confound the ink. What a blot? Now? Don't
you dare suppose I was in fault? No, sir, the
pen was diabbled, the paper worse. There was a concatenation
of ill sorted chances all coincided to contribute to that
fatal blot, which is so disarranged my ideas that I

(23:49):
must perforce finish before I had half disburthened my head
and heart. In some printed editions of Sancho's letters, the
ink blot in question is is reproduced the page like
with a smudgy little some sort of like typeface that
they created to be like. This is the ink block
character that we will use to print this love it.

(24:09):
The letters also give glimpses into what it was like
to be a black man living in London. A seventeen
seventy seven letter describes a night out in Voxhall courtesy
of a monsieur l quote. If you should happen to
know him, you may tell him from me that last
night three great girls, a boy and a fat old
fellow were as happy and pleased as a fine evening,

(24:30):
fine place, good songs, much company, and good music could
make them heaven and earth. How happy, how delighted were
the girls? Oh, the pleasures of novelty to youth. We
went by water, had a coach home, were gazed at, followed, etcetera, etcetera,
but not much abused. Sancho's criticisms of slavery include a

(24:51):
reference to past podcast subject Phyllis Wheatley, specifically to the
fact that John and Susannah Wheatley continued to enslave her
while also helping to publish her work. Quote it reflects
nothing either to the glory or generosity of her master,
if she is still his slave, except he glories in
the low vanity of having in his wanton power a

(25:13):
mind animated by Heaven, a genius superior to himself. This
letter was written in seventeen seventy eight, at which point
Phillis Wheatley had been manumented. In the seventeen seventy eight
letter to Jack wind Grave, Sancho responds to earlier letters
in which wind Grave had described Africans as deceitful. Sancho writes, quote,
my good friend, you should remember from whom they learned

(25:35):
those vices. Before going on to condemn the institution of
slavery and England's participation in it, Sancho acknowledges that he
himself has enjoyed what he called many blessings living in England,
before describing the nation's conduct as uniformly wicked in the
Indies and in Guinea. He then goes on to say, quote,
in Africa, the poor, wretched natives, blessed with the most

(25:57):
fertile and luxuriant soil, are rendered so much the more
miserable for what providence meant as a blessing. The Christians,
abominable traffic for slaves, and the horrid cruelty and treachery
of the petty kings, encouraged by their Christian customers who
carry them strong liquors to inflame their national madness, and
powder and bad firearms to furnish them with the hellish

(26:20):
means of killing and kidnapping. Beyond these selections, Sancho's letters
ranged all over in terms of their content. There's gossip,
ordinary goings on what was happening with Sancho and his family,
and observations of what was happening around him. He wrote
to other black men who were embarking on their free
adult lives with advice and guidance. Some of his letters

(26:42):
also include requests for help, like soliciting donations to help
black Londoners in need and the words of European Magazine
in two. Through his letters, Sancho quote presents to us
the naked effusions of a negro's heart, and it shows
it glowing with the finest philanthropy and the purist affections.
They have more warmth and elegance of diction and more

(27:04):
feeling than correctness. As we've talked about before, publishing books
at this point involved getting subscribers to buy the book
in advance. The first edition of Sancho's Letters, which came
out in seventeen eighty two, had one thousand, one eighty
one subscribers, and subscribers were all over the social and
economic spectrum, including servants, artists, and politicians, and including the

(27:26):
Prime Minister. Sancho's Letters became an immediate bestseller, with five
editions published between seventeen eighty two and eighteen o three.
Sancho's Letters have come and gone out of favor since
they were first published, in a pattern that's really similar
to past podcast subject Phillis Sweetly. Although both writers work
was used to support abolition, it was also cited by

(27:49):
people like Thomas Jefferson in Notes on the State of Virginia.
Jefferson wrote, quote, religion indeed has produced to Phillis s Wheetly,
but it could not produce a poet. The compositions published
under her name are below the dignity of criticism. The
heroes of Densidad are to her as hercules to the
author of that poem. Ignacious Sancho has approached nearer to

(28:10):
merit in composition. Yet his letters do more honor to
the hearts than the head. Sancho's work went out of
print in the nineteenth century, and when it was reprinted
in the nineteen sixties, some critics dismissed it as inauthentic
and too deferential to white British society, some of the
same criticisms that had been applied to Wheatley's poetry in
the twentieth century. But as was the case with Phyllis Wheatley,

(28:34):
in more recent years, critics have given Sancho more credit
for his ability to carve out a space for himself
in British society and to persistently press his correspondence on
issues like racism. In addition to his letters, Sancho was
the first black Man to publish music and the European
musical tradition. Four collections of his music survived today. Minuets,

(28:58):
Cotillions and Country Dances for the Island Mandolin, German Flute
and Harpsichord Composed by an African, which came out in
seventeen sixty seven. A collection of New Songs Composed by
an African, humbly inscribed to the Honorable Mrs James Brudenell
by her most humble and Obedient Servant, which came out
in seventeen sixty nine. Minuets Etcetera, Etcetera for the Violin, Mandolin,

(29:20):
German Flute and Harpsichord Books, Second Composed by an African
which came out in seventeen seventy and twelve Country Dances
for the Year seventeen seventy nine, sept for the Harpsichord
By Permission Humbly dedicated to the Right Honorable Miss North
by her most obedient Servant, Ignacious Sancho. All of these
works were published for the author, meaning that Sancho paid

(29:42):
for the printing himself, which was typical for amateur composers
and for professionals who were just starting out. This musical
work has been described as reflective of a knowledgeable, capable amateur,
a selection of charming songs that were easy for other
amateurs to sing and play at home. It's possible that
Sancho performed the music he wrote either at home or

(30:03):
at gatherings within London's black community as well. Menu scripts
of these works still exist and are in the collections
of the British Museum in the Library of Congress. A
theory of music that Sancho wrote unfortunately has been lost.
There are though videos of various ensembles performing selections of
this music that you can find online. Yeah, if you

(30:24):
google something like Ignacious Sancho music, you'll find videos of
performances and things like that. Ignacious Sancho has also been
the subject of a one man play by Paterson Joseph, who,
in addition to his other work, played Connor Mason on
the TV show Timeless, which I was a huge fan
of and I know many of our listeners were also.

(30:45):
This one man show is called Sancho an Active Remembrance,
and in a piece called Preface to Sancho an Active
Remembrance that was published on the website of the British Library,
Joseph writes about how many Black Britons trace their identities
back to the wind Rush gen ration that was a
wave of immigration to Britain from the Caribbeans starting with

(31:05):
arrivals aboard the h MT Empire wind Rush which arrived
on June. That, of course, is a whole other story,
which could be its own episode of the podcast. He
writes about how his research into Ignatius Sancho and the
time that he was living in quote changed forever the
meaning of the words black British. That piece is well

(31:27):
worth a read. It's easily found by googling preface to
Sancho an active remembrance um, and that is ignisious. Sancho.
Do you have a bit of listener mail for us?
I do, before I get to that. There are, of
course lots of places to read all of those letters
yourself online. Um. The whole thing, it's in the public domain.

(31:48):
I have a super super quick Facebook comment from Lynn
that is in reference to our podcast on James Baldwin,
and Lynn writes, just want to let you know that
in reference to the James Baldwin podcast, City College of
New York was tuition free until the early nineteen seventies,
so Baldwin didn't attend for other reasons. Um. We got
a couple of notes about that. One of the biographies

(32:10):
of of James Baldwin that I read for the episode
characterized his not attending City College of New York as
being about not being able to afford the tuition. And
in my head, I was like, I thought City College
of New York was free, And in my googling of that,
the first thing I saw was a h An article
that was about a tuition free um program for like

(32:31):
one particular set of like economically relatively disadvantaged students that
New York was rolling out, and I was like, oh,
that must have been what I was thinking of, and
just moved on in my head. Um, but that is correct.
It was not charging tuition as of the forties that
had been established as a tuition free learning institution and
continued to be so until various economic factors and whatnot

(32:55):
caused it to start charging tuition. Um. It probably still
was for financial reasons that he didn't go though, Like
his family was really really impoverished, and by working instead
of going to college it meant that he was able
to help them make ends meet. So I think even
though there wasn't tuition involved, that was still the root

(33:16):
of that matter. So thank you for that correction. I
apologize for not going deeply enough in fact checking myself. UM.
And if you would like to write to us about
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(33:38):
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