British abolitionist, writer and composer (c. 1729 – 1780)
Ignatius Sancho
Portrait of Sancho, c. 1768, by Thomas Gainsborough
Born
Charles Ignatius Sancho
c. 1729
Atlantic Ocean
Died
14 December 1780(1780-12-14) (aged 50–51)
London, Great Britain
Occupation(s)
Composer, writer, shopkeeper
Known for
First person of African descent to vote in a British general election; influence on abolitionism
Spouse
Anne Osborne[1]
Children
Frances Joanna (1761–1815), Ann Alice (1763–1805), Elizabeth Bruce (1766–1837), Jonathan William (1768–1770), Lydia (1771–1776), Katherine Margaret (1773–1779), William Leach Osborne (1775–1810)[2][3]
Signature
Charles Ignatius Sancho (c. 1729 – 14 December 1780) was a British abolitionist, writer and composer. Born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, Sancho was sold into slavery in the Spanish colony of New Granada. After his parents died, Sancho's owner took the two-year-old orphan to Britain and gifted him to three Greenwich sisters, where he remained for eighteen years. Unable to bear being a servant to them, Sancho ran away to the Montagu House in Blackheath where John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu taught him how to read and encouraged Sancho's budding interest in literature. After spending some time as a butler in the household, Sancho left and started his own business as a shopkeeper, while also starting to write and publish various essays, plays and books.
Sancho quickly became involved in the nascent British abolitionist movement, which sought to outlaw both the slave trade and the institution of slavery itself, and he became one of its most devoted supporters. Sancho's status as a property-owner meant he was legally qualified to vote in a general election, a right he exercised in 1774 and 1780, becoming the first known British African to have voted in Britain. Gaining fame in Britain as "the extraordinary Negro", Sancho became, to British abolitionists, a symbol of the humanity of Africans and the immorality of the slave trade and slavery. Sancho died in 1780. The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited and published two years after his death, are the first published letter collection by a writer of African descent.[4]
^King, Reyahn (1997). Ignatius Sancho: An African Man of Letters. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 17. ISBN 978-1855141926.
^Carey, Brycchan. "Ignatius Sancho's Friends and Family". Retrieved 8 January 2013.
^Edwards, Paul Geoffrey; Polly Rewt, eds. (1994). The Letters of Ignatius Sancho. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
^"First edition of the Letters of the late Ignatius Sancho, an African, 1782". British Library. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
Charles IgnatiusSancho (c. 1729 – 14 December 1780) was a British abolitionist, writer and composer. Born on a slave ship in the Atlantic, Sancho was sold...
with a Sancho. Sancha is the feminine equivalent. Sancho I Sancho II Sancho III Sancho IV Sancho V (also king of Aragon) Sancho VI Sancho VII Sancho I (León)...
also a writer, and his 2022 debut novel The Secret Diaries of Charles IgnatiusSancho won the 2023 Christopher Bland Prize awarded by the Royal Society of...
Ignatius is a male given name and a surname. Notable people with the name include: Ignatius of Antioch (35–108), saint and martyr, Apostolic Father, early...
letters of the famous freed slave IgnatiusSancho, Letter XIIII (dated 11 October 1772) is addressed to Soubise, whom Sancho encourages to consider his lucky...
ISBN 978-1-119-20246-2. Carey, Brycchan (March 2003). "The extraordinary Negro: IgnatiusSancho, Joseph Jekyll, and the Problem of Biography" (PDF). Journal for Eighteenth-Century...
Institute of Race Relations. ISBN 9780192184139. Sancho, Ignatius (1803). "Letters of the Late IgnatiusSancho, an African: To which are Prefixed..." p. v...
to Allan Ramsay, created c. 1757–1760 and believed to be of a young IgnatiusSancho. Before that, it was proposed in the 1960s to have depicted Olaudah...
March 2024, as part of the 'Greenwich Park Revealed' programme, the IgnatiusSancho Café was opened in a refurbished building by the Vanbrugh Gate on the...
"Director's Forward". IgnatiusSancho: an African Man of Letters. London: National Portrait Gallery. p. 12. "IgnatiusSancho and Laurence Sterne" (PDF)...
Philippa Trevor Phillips Courtney Pine Lord David Pitt Mary Prince Sade IgnatiusSancho Tessa Sanderson Baroness Patricia Scotland Mary Seacole Seal Emperor...
slaves managed to achieve prominence in 18th-century British society. IgnatiusSancho (1729–1780), known as "The Extraordinary Negro", opened his own grocer's...
by Abigail Adams and John Adams Letters of the Late IgnatiusSancho, an African by IgnatiusSancho The Letters of Vincent van Gogh The Letters of the Younger...
Origin Awards Urban Music Seminar Black Music Awards (BMA) John Blanke IgnatiusSancho George Bridgetower Joseph Emidy Fisk Jubilee Singers Samuel Coleridge-Taylor...
The first black person known to have voted in a British election was IgnatiusSancho who qualified in Westminster in 1774 and 1780. The Reform Act 1832...
of Buccleuch and Queensberry, (c. 1767), Boughton House Portrait of IgnatiusSancho, (1768), National Gallery of Canada Sir Robert Clayton (1769), Walker...
imagined friendship of Dido Belle with Elizabeth "Lizzie" Sancho, daughter of IgnatiusSancho. "Slavery and Justice at Kenwood House, Part 1" (PDF). Historic...
British person of African heritage to vote in a general election, IgnatiusSancho, voted in 1774 and 1780. During the Age of Liberty in Sweden (1718–1772)...
(born 1930) Chevalier de Saint-Georges, Guadeloupe (c. 1739–1799) IgnatiusSancho, England (c. 1729–1780) James Scott, US (1886–1938) Jacob J. Sawyer...
and former wife of footballer Jamie Redknapp) was born in Lewisham IgnatiusSancho (writer and campaigner) lived in Blackheath Dame Cicely Saunders (founder...
and performing the work of forgotten black composers, particularly IgnatiusSancho. In 2019 he collaborated with composer Jonathan Woody in developing...
plaque to IgnatiusSancho erected in October 2007 at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in the City of Westminster, near which site Sancho lived and...
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