What else does Constant's will tell us, apart from the name of his ship, and the name of his captain, and the fact he was getting ready to make another voyage to the Far East?

He had a wife.  Her name was Mary, and she lived in a part of London called Poplar.

(You won't be surprised to learn that that Poplar, which was really only developing in Constant's time, is on the Thames. The Thames was more than a source of expensive views to John Constant's London.  It was as important as Heathrow and Gatwick put together, it was a superhighway, a great sea highway through which the riches of empire flooded into the city.  London was first and foremost a port.   Constant was a sailor, and he, his wife and possibly his captain, Henry Smedley, would want to live close to the river.)

All Saints Church, Poplar

So here is the first mention of Mary Constant in her husband's will:

                              "..say, all my Wages Sum and Sums of Money  Lands

                            Tenements Goods Chattles and Estate whatsoever as shall

                            be any ways due owing or belonging unto me at

                            the time of my decease I do give devise and bequeath

                            the same unto my Wife Mary Constant of Poplar in 

                            the County of Middlesex And I do hereby nominate and..." 

..And  he goes on to name his wife Mary as his sole executrix.  John is facing the fact he may not come back from his voyage, and so he is careful to leave everything to the one person he wants to provide for.  There are no bequests to his parents or to any siblings, as often there were.  But then, how could there be?  John had been snatched away from those a long time since.

The will, made in 1788 before he set off on his last voyage.  (This is from an official copy that was made when it went through probate). 

And it says:

"In the Name of God    Amen 

 I, John Constant, now outward bound in the East India 

Ship Raymond, Capt. Henry Smedley Comm(ande)r. being in 

bodily health and of sound and disposing mind and 

memory and considering the perils and dangers of the 

seas and other uncertainties of this Transitory life do 

for avoiding controversies after my decease make publish

 and declare this my last will and testament in 

manner following, that is to say. First I commend my

soul to God that gave it and my body I commit to 

the Earth or Sea as it shall please God to order and..."

Well, you can see how it goes.  It's a bog standard will of the day - the bit about God is what everyone put in, and doesn't mean John Constant himself was religious (although of course he may have been).  But he, other Africans and indeed all people of colour were well advised to get themselves baptised, out of self interest.  At the time there existed a widespread, but unfortunately false, belief that a person who had been baptised a Christian could never be a slave.

And this brings up the great, great question mark hanging over the legal status of black people in Britain, who at the time might be classed as slaves elsewhere.   In Britain at this time they weren't...or not exactly.  The law was in two minds.  There were certainly hordes of British ships involved in slave-trading, and they quite legally took their human cargo from Africa to Britain's colonies, where the trafficked Africans were bought and enslaved by British plantation owners.  But that was all done under laws made in those colonies.  In Britain itself, their status was uncertain, because no legislation had ever formally been passed by Parliament defining who could, or could not be, a slave.

And somehow public opinion was not happy with the thought of slavery in Britain. Not happy at all.  Strangely, most British people had begun to feel that it might be all very well in foreign parts, and it might be a very fine, profitable and even glamorous thing to own slaves elsewhere - but not at home. It was not done at home.

In effect, this meant most black people in Britain were on much the same footing as the average white person, or else - very slightly better off.  They were seldom rich: but then neither was the average white subject of the King.  Most people were poor.  Most men - and all women - had no right to a vote.  The bulk of the British were not gentry or landowners, lawyers, shipowners, merchants or plantation owners: they were farm workers, spending their entire lives labouring on someone else's land for someone else's benefit.

But most black people in Britain were slightly better off than that, because most of them were household servants, and while 'servant' was perhaps not a great occupation it was in some ways an easier fate than being one of the rural poor: one of the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish peasantry.  Unlike John Constant, most of them did not make a will, because most would never own enough to make it worthwhile.

Falling behind with this already...

Okay, here's a picture.  It's of a wealthy captain in his cabin, sitting down about to eat, and it dates some forty years before John Constant's time.  It's relevant though because entering on the left, and bearing a dish of what looks like roast chicken, is the captain's cook.  And over on the right is another servant, this one providing some music for the diners, and as you can see he's black. 

I just put this painting in to show you that a captain having his own cook, and also a black servant, is not anything very unusual for the time.  In your mind you have to combine the two.  Constant's employer, Captain Henry Smedley, had done quite well for himself. He was working for a successful trading company, and when he was on a voyage he employed a black servant as his private cook.  Because God forbid he should eat the sort of crap his crewmen got.

Another Black History blog

Anyway - since this is Black History Month I thought I would start a nice little blog on Black British History.

And I'm basing it on stories you come across in The Times.  The Times newspaper has been around since the 18th century, and looking through old copies you quite often find passing references to people of African, or Afro-British descent.

But let me be clear: I don't mean to write about any Major Historical Figures here, not the big beasts - not your Olaudah Equianos or Dido Elizabeth Belles, the ones who get films made about them.  No. This blog is all about trying to shine a wobbly light on the small fry, on some of the thousands of ordinary black people who were living in Britain in Regency times. Ordinary people.

But I shouldn't even describe the people in this blog as 'ordinary' perhaps, because frankly you only get into the papers for being slightly out of the ordinary - either your house burnt down, or you robbed someone, or you were mangled in a frightful coaching accident. Because I'm sure most black people in Britain then, like most white people in Britain then, kept their heads down and noses clean and avoided being in the papers.  But these few either didn't, or couldn't.

Okay then. This blog is about quite ordinary black Brits, who briefly ceased to be ordinary because of some newsworthy accident that happened to them.  It is respectfully dedicated to the everday Brits who always fall through the cracks of Big History, the pretty-average black people of Georgian and Regency times, whose descendants are no doubt still living and working among us today.

So for my first subject we turn to a business advert of 1790. It's asking for the creditors of "the late John Constant, a black man" to step up.  Here's the ad.  It appeared on Page 1 of The Times, 26 October 1790.

So lets see what we can find about John Constant, beyond the stuff already implied in the advert - that he was the 'late' John Constant, and that he had been a sailor aboard a kind of ship called an 'East Indiaman' under its captain, Henry Smedley.  That he owed some debts: and that he evidently had the money to pay for them, as creditors are being invited to contact Mr. John Davis of Leadenhall Street. Let's google his background a little...

I can't find a picture of John's actual ship, the Raymond, so this is one of another 'East Indiaman'.  Belonging to the East India Company, these ships sailed between the fabulous markets of India and China, transporting luxury goods back to a Britain that couldn't get enough of them.  The Raymond took several months to complete her voyage, and would be in danger most of the way.  It wasn't just pirates or enemy navies you had to worry about either - it was storms and tempests, uncharted reefs, and of course you were travelling to foreign coasts where your body would encounter new diseases.

An East Indiaman always carried a valuable cargo, so naturally she was a plum prize for any pirate or privateer which could take her.  East Indiamen were merchant ships but always had a defensive capacity, be it guns or sometimes a detachment of troops travelling to protect her.  (Spoiler: a few years after John Constant died, his ship the Raymond was in fact captured by a French frigate.)

So John was a cook, but he wasn't the ship's cook - he cooked for the captain and not the crew.  He may even have been in the nature of a personal servant.  But he was travelling to the Far East, something very few British people of the day had chance to do.  He might have been well-placed to do a little trading on his own account.  Was that why he had creditors?

Here's a link to a blog with a lot more detail about the Honourable East India Company and the perils of sailing aboard its ships: Battles at sea