The following comes from newspapers [The Times (London), 21 April 1883, p 12; Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper (London), 21 January 1883; Standard (London), 19 April 1883, p 2; Illustrated Police News (London), 28 April 1883], from Mark Stevens, "Broadmoor Revealed: Victorian Crime and the Lunatic Asylum" (Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2013), pp 81-82 and corrects errors in Susan Okokon, "Black Londoners 1880-1990" (Sutton Publishing, 1998) p 33 which details his son (and has wrong birth date and place) and says the father was born in Jamaica. The Times (London), 9 March 1921 details the medal awarded for bravery in 1919.
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Black sailors in the Royal Navy included William Brown. The ‘Sheerness murder’ of January 1883 led to William Brown husband of victim Elizabeth Brown being sent to be tried – the chief witness being his stepson Alfred Rump who had been stabbed. Brown had several wounds possibly self-inflicted. One report said he was an African working for the local Board of Health having earned a naval pension. It emerged at the trial that Brown had served in the Royal Navy for twenty years, rising to be a Petty Officer and earning a good conduct medal. He had been married for fourteen years and lived with his wife and children and the stepson in Minster on the Isle of Sheppey in the Thames estuary. Brown suffered from epileptic fits. He was found not guilty through insanity. He had cut his throat and was unable to talk. He left the court to spend the rest of his life in an asylum. Brown was from British Guiana, met his wife in 1869 when he was 37, married two years later. She was a widow. He retired in 1881 with 21 years service. He died in Broadmoor, the asylum for the criminal insane, in mid-1885. He had three children who were raised in Sheppey's workhouse. They ‘never lost contact with their father’. Donald was sent to the Greenwich Royal Hospital and later went to sea, became a political radical in London’s East End and married a suffragette Eliza Adelaide Knight. ‘In 1919 he was decorated for single-handedly dragging a pile of burning munitions away from the Woolwich Arsenal’. His sister Amanda was placed in service and Anna, who had an eye problem, remained in the care of the workhouse, writing to her father and visiting him.
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Jeff Green
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Message Received: Aug 11 2014, 08:49 AM
From: "msherwood"
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc:
Subject: Kent - historic data needed
I am working with a couple of projects in Chatham - one at the Dockyards
where the Trust is developing a new visitor centre which will include
material on Black seamen/workers in the area. Some of this material will be
used in a two month 'Living Black History' exhibit in 2016.
The other is with the Medway African Caribbean Association's Black History
Alive project, which aims to 'develop and deliver workshops to young people
across Kent and Medway. They will be researching the history of Black People
from 1600-1900 across Kent and Medway, looking at their contribution to the
social/ economic development of the region'.
Does anyone have any data? Materials?
Thank you!
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