Also known as Sara or Saartjie, and as Bartman (1788?–1815/16), a member of the Khoisan people of southern Africa, exhibited as a ‘freak’ in 19th‐century Britain. Her original name is unknown, but when she was employed by a Dutch farmer called Peter Cezar, she was given the Afrikaans name of Saartjie [Little Sarah] Baartman, and this was later Anglicized in various forms. In 1810 she was brought to Britain by Peter Cezar's brother Hendric [or Henrick], a Boer farmer at the Cape, and Alexander Dunlop, a British army surgeon. Dunlop soon sold his interest in the enterprise to Cezar, who made money by exhibiting Baartman in London and elsewhere in Britain under the name of ‘the Hottentot Venus’. ‘Hottentot’ was a traditional derogatory term for Khoisan people, while ‘Venus’ appears intended to refer to the idea of ‘the Sable Venus or more generally ...
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Baartman, Sarah
John Gilmore
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Lindsay, Dido Elizabeth
Leslie Primo
Reputed daughter of Sir John Lindsay, then in the Royal Navy, on duty in the West Indies about 1760–5. Sir John discovered Dido's mother, a slave, on board a captured Spanish ship. She was brought to England, where it was speculated that a brief relationship between them resulted in Dido's birth. Soon after her birth, and for reasons unknown, Dido (also known as Belle) was taken to Kenwood House to be brought up with her ‘cousin’ Lady Elizabeth Murray by Lord and Lady Mansfield, Sir John Lindsay's uncle. Lord Mansfield was the Lord Chief Justice who would later be responsible for the landmark ruling of 1772 that freed the runaway slave James Somerset (see Somerset case). Sir John Lindsay died in 1788, when Dido was 25, leaving £1,000 in his will to share between Dido and a mysterious ‘brother’.
Dido lived at Kenwood for ...
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Soubise, Julius
Erin D. Somerville
Equestrian and man of letters, favourite of the Duchess of Queensberry and contemporary of Ignatius Sancho and Olaudah Equiano. Born on the Caribbean island of St Kitts, he was brought to England at the age of 10 and given to the Duchess of Queensberry as a gift. Under the Duchess's direction Soubise became an accomplished fencer and equestrian, serving as assistant to the Italian fencing master Dominico Angelo Malevolti Tremamondo.
Soubise is best remembered as a fop in London high society. Claiming to be an African prince, he was known for entertaining audiences in fashionable London clubs with comic songs and amateur theatre. He often escorted aristocratic women to the opera and was rumoured to be sexually engaged with the Duchess—a relationship depicted in an engraving by William Austin of the pair fencing (1773).
While Soubise regarded himself as a talented letter writer and poet of ...
