Key details: Frank Fillis brought the Savage South Africa to Earl's
Court. Peter Lobengula was the star of the show. The group arrived in
Southampton on 21 April 1899. Thousands of Victorians flocked to Earl's
Court to gaze at and touch the semi-naked Africans.
By June 1899 Lobengula had married the Cornish actress Kitty Jewell.
Kitty was in her early 20s and from a respectable background, her
father was an engineer. Yet she had lived with Lobengula, in a London
flat before the wedding. Kitty’s mother objected to the relationship
and several priests had refused to marry them. Within months the
marriage was in trouble: society’s disapproval was too overwhelming.
Kitty sold her story to a Manchester newspaper. It appeared on Saturday
12th August 1899. Kitty went on to stage her suicide at a Manchester
canal. Two years later she sued Lobengula for a divorce. Lobengula
remarried another white woman and became a miner in the slums of
Manchester.
Many thanks
Angela Allison
Coventry, UK
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