There is an old 18th century white washed house in The High Street of Kingston upon Thames that backs on to the river. On the road side there is a large circular green plaque positioned on the outside wall of this house that reads:
“ Cesar Picton
c1755-1836.
A native of Senegal
West Coast of Africa.
Brought to England in 1761
as servant to Sir John Philips of Norbiton
Kingston upon Thames.
Later a coal merchant and gentleman.
Lived here 1788 – 1807.”
Cesar Picton's house, front. Image @Tony Grant
Cesar Picton was a slave in the ownership of Sir John Philips, and was made a freed man. It is interesting to note that 1807, the last year Cesar Picton lived in this house, before he moved to Thames Ditton, a few miles away, the year the slave trade was abolished in Britain. It would be another twenty-six years before slavery itself would be abolished.
The road outside Cesar Picton's house. Image @Tony Grant
Cesar Picton
But Cesar Picton was a freed man long before this event and already a prosperous merchant. His freedom had to do with Sir John Philips and what he and his family believed. Jane Austen would have passed through Kingston at the time Cesar Picton was a gentleman and merchant there. I wonder if she saw him in the streets? Jane’s family must have had close connections with slavery. Her brother Henry was a banker. Most of the wealth of Britain at the time came from slavery. Her brother Charles was a Royal Naval captain and was stationed on the North American station, often calling into Bermuda. His ship must have been used to protect the slaving ships that the fictional SirThomas Bertram, in Mansfield Park, relied on for his wealth in the plantations.
Slave ship, Bristol
Apart from this oblique reference in Mansfield Park, Jane never mentions slavery or her views about it. During her lifetime the slave trade was abolished but not slavery itself. But change was happening, and by the time Cassandra died slavery was seen as a repugnant thing and was abolished. Was it one of the reasons Jane’s letters were culled by Cassandra in later life? Did she try to hide Jane’s – perhaps – unpopular views in the tide of anti slavery? We will never know.
The year 1761, when Cesar Picton was brought to Britain by Captain Parr of the British Army especially for Sir John Phillips, is an interesting one. Senegal had been British up to 1677, when the French took it over. France and Britain had been at war in the late18th and early 19th centuries. Goree, the island just off Senegal that was used for trading slaves, changed hands briefly during these wars back and forth between the British and French. It could well have been during one of these brief spells in charge by the British that Cesar Picton was bought as a promising servant for a wealthy man back in England.
There must have always been an element in British religious and moral sensibilities that saw these African slaves as equal human beings and at a high government level. In 1788 Britain set up a settlement for freed slaves further along the coast from Senegal to accommodate slaves from the plantations of Virginia and Carolina. They had helped the British fight The War of Independence against the Americans, and a place for them to live had to be found after the British retreated from America. Nova Scotia was their first settlement, but the climate was too cold.
Freetown, Sierra Leone, 1803
Sierra Leone on the West African coast was set up for them, and Freetown, the capital, was established. But slavery was a vital element in the Empire for trade and financial wealth. It couldn’t be given up that easily, no matter how much it pricked certain people’s consciences, and the majority of people in England were kept ignorant of what went on in the slave plantations.
Sir John Philipps
Sir John Philipps (1666 – 1773), the gentleman who obtained Cesar Picton, was a member of an illustrious family whose main seat was Picton Castle, near Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, South Wales. In the 18th century, the Philips family was the most powerful family in the political, social, and economic arenas in Pembrokeshire. Sir John Philips, who owned large areas of land in Wales, was a philanthropist who supported the building of schools. He built twentythree of them in Pembrokeshire alone. He also built schools in Camarthenshire.
Fort Nassau, Senegal, 1760
It was to Picton Castle in Wales that Cesar Picton was first brought from Senegal. He then took the name of the castle as his surname.
Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire, 1865
Sir John Philipps attended Westminster public school in 1679 when he was 13 years of age. He went on to Trinity College, Cambridge between 1662 to 1664, and was admitted to Lincolns Inn in 1683. He did not complete his degree at Cambridge, and he was not called to the bar either. Sir John appears to have wasted his time and seemed to have enjoyed a frivolous life style when he was young. However by 1695 he became the Member of Parliament for Pembrokeshire. He remained a Member of Parliament until 1702. He then later returned to parliament for Haverfordwest and remained there until 1772. On the 18th January, 1697, Sir John’s father died, and he became the 4th baronet. In the same year he married Mary, the daughter and heiress of Anthony Smith, a rich East India merchant. Sir John had influential friends and great wealth. His sister Elizabeth’s daughter married Horace Walpole in 1700.
The Oxford Holy Club
From 1695 to 1737, Sir John was a leading figure in many religious and philanthropic movements. Most important of all, in relation to Cesar Picton, Sir John was a member of The Holy Club. The Holy Club had many religious reformers amongst its numbers, A.H. Francke, A.W. Boehme, J.F. Osterwald, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. These were Evangelists, Methodists and Quakers. It was from amongst these religious colleagues that the anti slavery movement found it’s strength and became an unstoppable force. Sir John was part of a group therefore that constructed the legislation to abolish the save trade and eventually abolish slavery. In his treatment of Cesar Picton we can see these beliefs in early action. It might have been that Sir John Picton actively sought a slave from Senegal with the express purpose of freeing him once back in England and supporting him to become a wealthy esteemed member of society. Maybe Cesar Picton was his proof that slaves were his equal. This is what happened to Cesar Picton.
Cesar Picton's coal wharf site. Image @Tony Grant
Cesar Picton was six years old when he was brought to England by Captain Parr , an British Army officer who had been serving in Senegal.. He was given to Sir John Philips along with a parakeet. Cesar was born a Muslim but soon after arriving in Sir John’s household at Picton Castle he was baptised and given the name of Cesar on the 6th December 1761. He was dressed as a servant wearing a velvet turban, which cost 10 shillings and sixpence. It was fashionable for black servants to be richly dressed. There were very few black servants in England. Only very rich merchants and the wealthy aristocracy would have them. They were not treated the same as slaves which were used in their tens of thousands on the sugar, tobacco and cotton plantations of the West Indies and the mainland coast of America. Normally a black servant would have been the personal servant of the male head of the household but Cesar became the favourite of Lady Philips. He mixed with the family on equal terms. Sir John’s philanthropic and religious beliefs were applied to the treatment of Cesar.
Horace Walpole
Horace Walpole, the younger son of the first British Prime Minister Robert Walpole. who married Elizabeth the sister of Sir John, wrote in a letter to a friend in 1788,
“I was in Kingston with the sisters of Lady Milford; they have a favourite black, who has been with them a great many years and is remarkably sensible.”
Sir John died in 1764 and his son became Lord Milford. Milford is the area in Wales where Picton Castle is situated. Lady Milford made a new will in which she left Cesar £100. Her son sold Norbiton Place near Kingston. With the money he was given, Cesar was able to rent a coach house and stables next to the Thames in Kingston. This building today is called Picton House.
Kingston Upon Thames, 18th century
After paying a corporation tax of £10 to trade, Picton set himself up as a coal merchant. By 1795 he had made enough money to buy Picton House, a wharf for his coal barges, and a malt house for brewing beer. In 1801, one of the Philips daughters died and left him a further £100. He was wealthy by now on his own terms. In 1807,when he was 52, he let his properties in Kingston and lived in Tolworth neaby to Kingston for a while.
Picton House, Thames Ditton
In February 1816 he bought a house in Thames Ditton, down river from Kingston, for the then massive sum of £4000. He lived there for the next twenty years until his death. When he died the list of the contents of his house included a horse and chaise, two watches, with gold chains, seals, brooches, gold rings, a tortoiseshell tea chest, silver spoons and tongs. There were also paintings of his friends hanging in his house including a portrait of himself.
While Picton was living in Thames Ditton, the other two Philips daughters died in Hampton Court. Joyce left him £100 and Katherine left him £50 and a legacy of £30 per year for life. Cesar himself died in 1836 aged 81. He did not marry and had no heirs, and was buried in All Saints Church, Kingston upon Thames on the 16th June, 1836. He had become very fat in his old age and his body had to be taken to the church on a four-wheeled trolley.
Cesar Picton Gravestone. Image @Find a Grave
Unlike some of the other freed slaves in England at the time, Cesar did not make his thoughts known about slavery and the slave trade. He was happy to lead a comfortable life. Olaudah Equiano wrote a book about his experiences and actively took part in the campaigning of William Wilberforce and Thomas Clarkson. Others, like Briton Hammon and Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, made oral accounts that were transcribed. Letters were written by Ignatius Sancho to help bolster the anti slavery cause.
Jane Austen wrote in Mansfield Park,
These opinions had been hardly canvassed a year, before another event arose of such importance in the family, as might fairly claim some place in the thoughts and conversation of the ladies. Sir Thomas had found it expedient to go to Antigua himself, for the better arrangement of his affairs, and he took his eldest son with him in the hope of detaching him from some bad connections at home. They left England with the probability of being nearly a twelve month absent.”
Slaves digging the cane holes, Antiqua, 1823
Sir Thomas Bertram’s affairs in Antigua could only have referred to his sugar plantations, the source of all his wealth and the financial source of Mansfield Park itself.
Slave cutting sugar cane, 1799
Jane’s own brothers, Frank and Charles would have been amongst the captains with their warships used to protect the likes of Sir Thomas Bertram’s trading ventures, which must have included slaves for his plantations in Antigua. Henry, Jane’s favorite brother, would have invested the proceeds of this trade through his bank. It is very possible that Jane caught sight of the famous Cesar Picton, wealthy merchant and freed man, walking in the streets of Kingston upon Thames. I wonder what her opinion was?
Kingston Upon Thames, Thomas Hornor, 1813
Post written by Tony Grant, London Calling.
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This is so fascinating. Personally I would love to find out more about Mrs Leigh Perrot’s black servant, Frank. Since she was an heiress with land in the Barbados I would say that he came from there. I wonder whether he might have been imported to serve chocolate as there was quite a vogue for having black boy children serving chocolate dressed in a very ornate style wearing turbans.
re Jane’s attitude to slavery I have at the back of my mind that one of the people that she jokingly intended to marry was a man who spoke against slavery in parliament – not William Wilberforce – someone else. I may be wrong and can’t spare the time to delve in my books as I am currently frantically writing a book about Victorian London and don’t want to distract myself!
This post is so interesting!
It gives yet another, more personal, insight into the issue of the slave trade in England, as was so vividly portrayed by Ioan Gruffudd in the film, Amazing Grace. (There is a wonderful short book on the life of William Wilberforce by John Piper.)
Thank you !
Vic, this is fascinating and well-researched. One element often overlooked, Cesar was born a Muslim, and the Muslims facilitated the sale of slaves at the source.
Vic and Tony, what a fascinating story and lovely photographs, old and new. You are both amazing!
Fascinating indeed! We will never know what Jane really thought about slavery, but perhaps it was one of those topics that she felt too uninformed to form an opinion of. Having got so used to the idea of slavery through her connections in the West Indies, perhaps she didn’t hold negative views on it.
In Emma, to, Mrs. Elton and Jane Fairfax talk about slavery as a reproachable thing:
“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”
“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies.”
Thanks for this: I will certainly go and have a look at Picton’s house as I live nearby in Twickenham.
Describing him as a ‘gentleman’ is plain wrong; he was a successful tradesman; a ‘gentleman’ is:
‘1.a. A man of gentle birth, or having the same heraldic status as those of gentle birth; properly, one who is entitled to bear arms, though not ranking among the nobility (see quot. 1869), but also applied to a person of distinction without precise definition of rank. Now chiefly Hist.
1869 J. E. Cussans Handbk. Heraldry (rev. ed.) xvi. 201 Gentlemen are all those who, lawfully entitled to Armorial distinction, are not included in any of the before-mentioned degrees [of nobility].
. . c. Used (with more or less of its literal meaning) as a complimentary designation of a member of certain societies or professions. Chiefly pl. Obs. in ordinary use.
. . 4. a. A man of superior position in society, or having the habits of life indicative of this; often, one whose means enable him to live in easy circumstances without engaging in trade, a man of money and leisure.’ [OED]
If he had had a son as successful as he was but from a much better start, his grandson might have been wealthy enough to set himself up as a gent – barring the issue of his skin colour, of course, which might have been a bar, depending on his wealth.
The painting ‘The Family of Sir William Young’ [my ancestor] by Johan Zoffany shows a young black servant:
‘It is usually dated to 1770 when Sir William Young (1725 – 1788) obtained his baronetcy and was appointed Governor of Dominica. The family all wear theatrical Van Dyck costume, which was then very popular in family portraits.
It is possible that the black youth steadying the boys on horseback was a slave who had accompanied Young to England from one of his West Indian plantations. He does not wear a metal collar which was sometimes worn as a sign of slave status. This, together with his familiar manner with the child on horseback suggests that he may have been regarded by the family as more of a servant than a slave. This sympathetic attitude towards and portrayal of the black youth may be a reflection of the growing change in attitudes towards slavery in the late 18th century.’
http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/18c/zoffany.aspx
I am also descended from the Lascelles, who made an immense fortune from slaving, sugar and then financing the trade – so much that they were created earls of Harewood and married into the Royal Family.
http://www.harewood.org/
Researching walking sticks, a.k.a., canes, in Regency England in our Pride and Prejudice class for a project called “Quirky Jane Austen.”
Please e-mail any advice for information on walking sticks.
Thank you.
Xuelin and Dangnam
Try this link for a start: http://www.janeausten.co.uk/magazine/page.ihtml?pid=269&step=4
Thanks so much!
Thank you for all your comments. I enjoyed gathering the information and visiting Cesar’s homes.
All the best,
Tony
I have replied above through my daughter, Emily’s blog. I didn’t realise until too late.
This was a fascinating post. I recall black servants being called tigers in some regency fiction, though it might have been a Georgette Heyer. Anybody know anything about that? I, too, loved Amazing Grace. I’m going to watch it again soon.
I’m sorry to be unkind, but there’s a considerable amount of muddled thinking in this article. Far from protecting slave ships, from 1807 onwards, the Royal Navy was actively preventing the slave trade, seizing ships and freeing the Africans they found on board. As Tories, the Austens would have been anti-slavery – it was the Whigs who were in favour – it’s where their money came from. (Remember how Dr Johnson, another Tory, bought his slave, another Frank, promptly freed him, educated him, and finally, in his will, made him his heir.) Slavery runs as a dark thread through Mansfield Park and the theme surely is that slavery is corrupting – I really can’t understand why anyone should believe Jane thought otherwise. I suspect that this is one of the things that the Austen girls found unlikable about Jane Leigh Perrott. Jane makes a remark about the warmth of Frank’s welcome when they get to the Paragon, and insinuates rather scathingly that it was warmer than that of her relations. Doesn’t sound like a slavery supporter to me!
Kirsten you are not being unkind at all. Thank you for your comment. I was making rather a general statement about Jane’s family’s connections with slavery. However, before 1805 , the Year of the Battle of Trafalgar, Jane.s sailor bothers would have had no choice about protecting slave ships. whether they were Whigs or Tories. The Royal Navy up to 1805 had indeed enabled the triangular trade between, Africa, the colonies and England. That trade would not have prospered without them
Mansfield Park was written at Chawton between 1812 and 1814 and published in 1814 seven years after the abolition of slavery. but Jane uses slavery in Mansfield Park more as an example of moral corruption. I am not sure it is a dark thread of slavery that runs through Mansfield Park there is also the morally corrosive influence of Mr and Miss Crawford who bring the moral attitudes of London society to Mansfield.which is more corrosive and also the breakdown of social barriers when lost in the ,”wilderness.” I would like to hear your thoughts about the influence of slavery throughout Mansfield Park though.
As for Henry the banker. Maybe I am just cynical but a great part of Britains wealth came from slavery . London also had a rather large economy based on prostitution. I would be very surprised if banks, any banks, did not deal with the money from these sort of dealings.
I did not make any sort of statement about Jane’s own views on slavery by the way. We don’t know her views. I am with you, she probably did abhor the practice.
Anyway, once again thank you for your comments and interest in my article, Kirsten and all the best.
Tony
PS would you like to look at an article i wrote about the recent archaeological dig on the site of Steventon rectory. They found numerous clay pipes and I have made the outlandish suggestion that maybe, just maybe, Jane Austen was a smoker!!!!!!
It was the slave TRADE that was made unlawful for British subjects in 1814; slavery itself was abolished by the Emancipation Act of 1833:
‘ . . This belated piece of legislation at last freed enslaved Africans in the British Caribbean islands (whose status had not been improved by the earlier abolition of the trade) from 1 August 1834 (although the slave-owners controversially received £20 million in compensation and an interim period in which slaves were deemed to be ‘apprentices’ did not end until 1838).’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/abolition/parliament_article_01.shtml
Tony is absolutely correct to remind us that the wealth made from the sugar grown by slaves flowed via merchants and their bankers throughout the wealthy classes, including the growing class of rentiers who lived off their dividends without enquiring too closely whence they came. See my post above re the Lascelles family.
As for the pipe smoking, how, pray, does Tony suggest Jane hid the strong smell of pipe tobacco smoke?
Going back to Frank, the Leigh Perrot’s servant, it has occurred to me that Frank, assuming he is black – it’s by no means certain – could have lived in Bath, and be a servant they hired, as was the custom when lodgings were taken. He does not appear among references to regular servants. Bath had a large black population, some of whom, like Cesar, did very well for themselves.
As regards slavery and wealth, although Bath prides itself on being abolitionist, rather turning up its nose at Bristol, my husband and I are leading a walk in the Literature Festival which will show how Bath was built on slave trade money. And of course, the Duke of Chandos, to whom Mrs Austen was related, had been involved. Nevertheless, I think there are enough anti-slavery comments in Jane Austen’s works to make her views very clear indeed.
It was, I suggest, the profits from sugar produced by slaves rather than slaving itself which paid for Bath and the gracious living therein:
‘IT IS no exaggeration to say that the foundations of the modern globalised world were made of sugar. . . The wealth that came from sugar was extraordinary. In late 17th-century Barbados, the income from a 200-acre (81-hectare) cane plantation and the processing factory that went with it was enough to support the lifestyle of a duke in England. A hundred years later, the trade flowing from Jamaica alone—sugar, slaves and rum, which was made from molasses—was worth more than all the traffic with North America. No wonder the French chose their sugar islands over Canada and Britain’s attempt to hold onto its American colonies was so half-hearted . . ‘
Review of: The Sugar Barons: Family, Corruption, Empire, and War in the West Indies. By Matthew Parker. Walker & Co; 446 pages; $30. Hutchinson; £25.
http://www.economist.com/node/21525808
Jane Austen was an ‘lady’, the daughter of a vicar, living off the the work of others until 1811. Her brother Henry was a banker until he went bankrupt in 1816. No doubt he lent money to finance the sugar trade without losing much sleep about the sufferings of the slaves.
Love your article on Cesar Picton, however i’m pretty certain that the portrait is of Ignatius Sancho.