Sarah Forbes Bonetta: New Biography Retells Life of Woman 'Gifted' to Queen Victoria
A new biography of Sarah Forbes Bonetta, the Yorùbá woman presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle aged seven as a 'diplomatic gift', has been published, and her great-great-grandson Bayo Randle has welcomed it.
Sarah Forbes Bonetta: New Biography Retells Life of Woman 'Gifted' to Queen Victoria
Prof Henry Lovejoy's book, 'Becoming Sarah Forbes Bonetta: A Yorùbá Woman in Queen Victoria's Court', by the Canadian academic, has now been published, and Bayo Randle, a 37-year-old British-Nigerian barrister from London, has spoken of his family history in response to it.
Who was Sarah Forbes Bonetta?
Born in 1843 in Òkè-Òdàn, south-west Nigeria, Bonetta was originally called Àìná. In 1848 her family was killed when her town was attacked by forces of King Ghezo of Dahomey. She is believed to have been captured, then aged five, by the agodjié – the all-female regiment depicted in the Hollywood movie The Woman King – and held at King Ghezo's court.
In 1850, Frederick Forbes of the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron went to Dahomey – which is now Benin – to petition Ghezo to sign an anti-slavery treaty. The squadron had been set up to enforce the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. The mission failed, but Forbes asked to take Bonetta to England.
He gave her his own name and that of his ship, the Bonetta, and before arriving in England petitioned for her to be 'the property of the crown'. She was then presented to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, aged seven, as a 'diplomatic gift' from an African king.
The queen's household
Victoria paid for Bonetta's education, approved her marriage to one of west Africa's wealthiest men, and was godmother to Bonetta's eldest daughter. But Lovejoy argues she was effectively held in a form of bonded labour under the legal structures that followed abolition.
"effectively indentured to Queen Victoria until age 19"
That is how Lovejoy, of the University of Colorado Boulder, describes Bonetta's status. With Kartikay Chadha, his research on liberatedafricans.org documents more than 700,000 Africans 'liberated' from enslavers who were forced into indentures of up to 14 years 'to pay for the cost of their own freedom' by governments including Britain's. He claims Bonetta sat at the elite end of this system, 'educated to be a missionary who would Christianise Africa'.
"Sarah's imagery was used to project the idea of the queen's benevolence – at a time when 'liberated' Africans are being forced into indentures."
When Bonetta attended the 1858 wedding of Victoria's daughter, the Princess Royal, American abolitionists saw it as proof that Victoria, then the most powerful woman on Earth, believed in equality.
Marriage and later life
Bonetta was married off to James Pinson Labulo Davies, a merchant and philanthropist, of whom she wrote: "I don't feel a particle of love for him." She nevertheless became one of the most artistically represented and widely reported African women of her time.
Her achievements included work as a:
- gifted linguist
- musician
- travel writer
- educator
She was also a leading woman in 19th-century Lagos. She died of tuberculosis in Madeira in 1880, aged 37.
The descendant's view
Lovejoy's book challenges the myths that Bonetta was a Yoruba princess, that she was Queen Victoria's goddaughter, and that she spent most of her life in England. Randle first learned his family history from his father, Adekunle Randle, a retired lawyer, and maintains his family's ancestral ties with Òkè-Òdàn.
Lovejoy tracked down a plaster bust of Bonetta, sculpted in 1851 by Benedetto Pistrucci, the Royal Mint's chief engraver, to a private family collection; Randle saw it last year. Seeing a child ancestor's likeness struck him as remarkable, he said, yet the bust was made for phrenological purposes within a racist framework, showing her as an 'excellent specimen'.
The family still holds the engraved goblet and plate Queen Victoria gave to Bonetta's daughter, Victoria, who was educated at Cheltenham ladies' college with the queen's help.
"It's for the advancement of knowledge and how we learn from the past."
That was Randle's response to the book. He added: "But it would be a mistake to paint her story as entirely tragic... she thrived. She is an early example of Black Britain." On the idea of the 'gift' itself, he questioned whether any person with agency could truly be handed from one owner to another – while acknowledging that, had she not been given to Queen Victoria, he might not exist today.
