Black Voices and Absences in theCommemorations of Abolitionin North East England

Sheree Mack

This article explores, froma personal perspective, themotivations behind the organisational

events to mark the bicentenary of the abolition of transatlantic slave trade in relation to the

author’s own personal research in order to aid her creative endeavours. The focus is the

‘black’ presence, the people from Africa and the Caribbean who came to the North East,

settling or just passing through, who have been hidden within the North East history.

These individuals contributed to the North East way of life in some way or other. The

article argues that these people should be remembered through inclusion in the local

history taught in schools.

Black Indies History

It has been written in historythat the North East was on the wrong coastfor its ports to be involved in slavery.Coal, the Ebony King,was its bread and butter, not slaves.A complex web of land, trade,industry and people were concealed.Can’t find what you can’t seecan you?1

I use this poem, taken from my recently published chapbook, The White of the Moon,

to illustrate the climate we, in the North East of England, were operating under over

two years ago. When 2007 came, government-backed initiatives to mark the bicenten-

ary of the abolition of transatlantic slavery in the British colonies, gave us a vehicle –

Slavery and Abolition

Vol. 30, No. 2, June 2009, pp. 247–257

Sheree Mack is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, after completing an MA in

Creative Writing at Northumbria University in 2003. She is an active freelance writer and performer within

the United Kingdom. Sheree has also been published in a variety of anthologies, literary magazines and websites,

including The Rialto, Other Poetry and Aesthetica. Her pamphlet, Like the Wind Over a Secret, will be published in

2009. Correspondence to: Flat 4, 43 Percy Park, Tynemouth, North Shields NE30 4JX, UK. Tel.: þ44 0191 275

0925; Email: sheree.mack@ncl.ac.uk

ISSN 0144-039X print/1743-9523 online/09/020247–11DOI: 10.1080/01440390902818963 # 2009 Taylor & Francis

almost permission, as if that were needed - to start looking into our past, to establish

the true extent of the North East’s involvement in slavery, the trade and its abolition.

While completing my PhD in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, I make my

living through freelance writing, involving commissions, workshops and residencies.

During 2007, my diary was jam-packed with commitments across the North East

and North West of England, as organisations, groups and schools clamoured to do

something, hold some kind of event or project to mark the bicentenary of the abolition

of the transatlantic slave trade. It felt at times as if I was seen as the only ‘black’ writer

in the region who was working in connection with the bicentenary. And that

everyone’s project would benefit from having my input into it.

Part of the problem with the North East is its image. I was born in Bradford, to a

Trinidadian father and a Geordie mother of Ghanaian and Bajan decent. When I

was 10, my father died, and we moved to the North East so my mother could be

closer to her family. Therefore, I would say that my formative years have been in the

North East. A North East that was known for its heavy industry, coal, shipping,

steel. A hard working gritty place, but also an insular, narrow-minded and racist

place, in my experience. Old habits die hard. Things are changing, however. This

image is shifting, being forced out by ‘progress’. We have NewcastleGateshead, all

one word, all one name, to signify the collaborations that are operating across the

Tyne to make this a ‘city of culture’, a city of worth. We now have the Baltic Art

Gallery, the Sage Music Centre in Gateshead, the Millennium Bridge and, in the

Ouseburn Valley, the regeneration of an arts quarter on the site of former industrial

workshops. With these developments comes a turning away from the past. Those

involved claim that there is more to this region than its coal mining history: they

prefer to be perceived as cultured, sophisticated, intelligent. Yet in dismissing the cul-

tural heritage, these new cultural intellectuals can sometimes seem ashamed of the past.

Personally, I have always been interested in the past of this region, hoping that

history could redeem it. I had to know and feel that this region was not always so

racist and narrow-minded, that this region empathised with, supported and welcomed

people of other cultures at some point. I had to know that there were people from

other cultures living in the North East prior to the Congolese or Polish, who are

seeking refuge and asylum, and also in some cases opportunities, here now. I had to

feel that there were black people becoming part of the community before the

Yemenis of South Shields, or the Bangladeshis of Sunderland settled here. I needed

to know that there were others before living history who came to the North East

and settled, making a life for themselves. I needed to know this, to feel this, in

order to root myself in this region, to understand this region better, to rub out the

experiences of racism and replace it with a more balanced view. I needed to feel at

home.

The Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle-upon-Tyne was established as a

learned society in 1793. It moved to its current building on Westgate Road, just down

from Central Station, in 1825. It has a large collection of books, pamphlets and original

material on aspects of history in the region. It is a rich source of information about

colonial, Newcastle and North East affairs. In 2004 I approached the ‘Lit & Phil’,

248 Sheree Mack

as it is always known, with one thing in mind: finding out about the region’s history in

relation to slavery, and the presence of black people here. I had heard of a planned

Archival Mapping and Research Project, financed by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and

led by the Lit&Phil in partnership with Tyne and Wear Museums and Archives.2

This would involve researching the collections and archives held by the society, the

Northumberland Collections Service, Tyne & Wear Archives and the Special Collec-

tions in the Robinson Library at Newcastle University. I wanted to do something

separate, different, personal and creative.

Surprisingly, given the Lit&Phil’s long history, I was its first Writer-in-Residence.

Initially the residency was to run from September 2006 to December 2006. The idea

was that I would explore their primary sources and use these to feed into other

events, projects and work for which I had gained Arts Council England funding.

After the four months, I had hardly skimmed the surface of their resources. Luckily,

through further funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund, my residency was extended

to the end of 2007. To illustrate the extent and range of the North East’s involvement in

this complex issue of slavery, I will briefly list a few of the details that came to light

during this period. In the religious sphere:

Pillars of Society

763 acresof land;three windmillsfor the cultivationand manufactureof sugar;315 negroes;100 head of cattle,

the estate ofChristopherCodrington,left to theSocietyfor the Propagationof the Gospel inForeign Parts, 1710.

His wish toestablish aCollegeupon the sitefor the sonsof the localgentry inBarbados.

Off the backsof slavesconstruction

Slavery and Abolition 249

began in 1714,before, during,as canewas plantedand cut,

boiled, cooled,skimmed,distilledinto rum to feeda growing thirst.The sicklytrade hungheavy in the air.

The cream offthe top was usedto sweetenthe affiliationwith DurhamUniversity,DurhamCathedral.

In the political sphere, Charles Grey, a Northumberland-born aristocrat and MP

played a significant role in the passage of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave

Trade in 1807. Grey (by now Earl Grey) was prime minister when the Slavery Abolition

Act of 1833 was passed.3 Since 1838, his statue has stood in Newcastle city centre at a

spot known as ‘The Monument’.4

The North East also had its plantocracy. For example, Anthony Hylton of South

Shields was a master mariner who in 1623 took settlers to Jamestown, Virginia. The

Hyltons were seafarers who forged links with the Caribbean. Anthony Hylton acquired

a tobacco plantation, was appointed Governor of St Kitts and Nevis in 1628, and later

became a tobacco merchant selling on the London market.5

In terms of trading, probably the most interesting find was that of the Graham

Clarke family of Newcastle. They were linked by marriage to two old Jamaican

planter families, the Barretts and Parkinsons. By 1820, the family had interests in at

least 13 plantations on Jamaica. A total of five Graham Clarke ships have been ident-

ified as operating on the Atlantic trade taking Tyneside products (coal, glass, pottery

and linen) to the New World and returning with slave-produced goods, primarily

sugar and rum, but also hard woods and indigo. This took place right up to the

1830s. There were three sugar refineries in Newcastle and Gateshead, two owned by

Graham Clarke. John Graham Clarke, the grandfather of Elizabeth Barrett Browning,

the author of Aurora Leigh, was the owner of Jamaican plantations that exported sugar

and rum to the Tyne. He was a major shareholder in the Newcastle bank of Burdon and

Surtees, playing an important part in the nineteenth-century industrial economy.6

As for the abolition movement, the North East region of England was very active. In

the 1830s, women started to challenge the social conventions that denied them direct

250 Sheree Mack

involvement in a campaign they had supported for many years. Two Newcastle

women, Anna and Ellen Richardson, played leading roles in organising a Free

Labour Produce Campaign. They wrote anti-slavery missives and welcomed a succes-

sion of American abolitionists to the region, including the celebrated Frederick

Douglass. North Eastern abolitionists played a vital part in the national abolitionist

movement, and helped to create a climate of public opinion that placed pressure on

politicians to make changes.7

Still more was discovered, and more that remains to be found: the volunteers

involved in Archival Mapping and Research Project are continuing their research.8

During my residency, my focus was always on the black presence in the North East.

As mentioned above, there was a tendency to assume that the North East could not

be involved in the slave trade and its abolition, yet even when details, facts and

figures came to light, still no one seemed to be interested in the black presence in the

region. I felt this was a neglected area. As the actor David Monteith said, during his

search regarding his ancestry:

One of the revelations for me was to stop looking at slaves as slaves, but to look atthem as people who overcame brutalisation and dislocation, who managed to find away to persevere. They endured, they profited, they found a way to build a life.9

This is what I was interested in, in those individuals, individual voices and stories that

were hidden in North East history. I appreciate the reality of the situation regarding

the lack of records, the name changes, the difficulties in putting names to the faces.

I realise that these names are lost in history. Yet has anyone actually actively looked

to the North East archives for evidence of a black presence before the 1900s? As far

as I know, leaving aside Sean Creighton’s study of the black and Asian presence in

the North East, there have been no studies into this history. In the remainder of

this article, I want to touch briefly upon three individuals whose stories and voices

were uncovered in the course of my research: Mary Ann Blyth, Henry Highland

Garnet and William Fifefield.

Mary Ann Blyth as told to Alice Spence, 1875

I was sold at auction, at the age of 12.Bought for 450 dollars,a good sum they said, for my size.On a farm with hundreds of others,I was made to work all day long.My mistress was cruel, and thought it nothingto lock me up in the barn, and whipme with cowhide, for no good reason.

I took my punishments.Inside I planned my escape.I said to myself, ‘Just go and do itone more time.’ She did.I worked a nail out of the window frame

Slavery and Abolition 251

in the barn. At nightfall, I squeezedmyself out and ran. I got help.Jemmy hid me in the woods, under a tree.

My escape kicked up a stink.The blood hounds were set loose.I was scared. They knew my scent.They found me. But I was good to them,they were good to me. They licked my handand walked on by. I stayed in those woodsfor 6 weeks. Too scared to move or sleepfor fear of the white man and the snakes.

A ship bound for England came up river.Jemmy got me on it. The shipmate hid me in the hold.Advertisements were on board for my capture;dead or alive, there was a reward.Many a times on board that ship,I thought my time had come.But they never found mein all the four months I was hidden.

The longer I was travelling on that old ship,the further I was running from slavery to freedom.We reached England, Grimsby. Coached to York.It was a bitter cold night, when we dockedin North Shields, Christmas morning, 1831.I was met by two young ladies by the nameof Spence who were from the Friendly Society.This was when my life begun.

Mary Anne Macham, born in Virginia in 1802, fled from slavery in America and made

a life for herself in the North East. Throughout her life she looked after the different

generations of the Spence family. In 1841, at the age of 39, she married James Blyth, a

local rope maker and later a bankers’ porter, possibly working for the Spence family

bank. The couple, who had no children, lived in various houses on Howard Street

in North Shields. James Blyth died in 1877 and Mary Ann Blyth continued to live

in North Shields until she moved in with relatives of her late husband in South

Benwell, in Newcastle. When she died in 1893, aged 91, she had enjoyed more than

sixty years of freedom. She is buried in Preston Village in North Shields.10

Henry Highland Garnet

Quakers, Baptists and Methodists in Newcastle always retained an interest in slave

issues in the United States. It was not until 1838, when emancipation occurred in

the British colonies, that their full attention could be turned to the fight against

the slave trade operating in other countries. The SpenceWatson family were very influ-

ential in the North East in terms of industry, religion and education, as were the

Richardson family, who dominated the arts of the time. A number of abolitionists

252 Sheree Mack

passed through the Spence Watson and Richardson’s houses: Charles Lennox Remond,

Frederick Douglass, William Wells-Brown and Ellen and William Craft to name but a

few. Douglas and Wells-Brown both gained their freedom through funds raised in the

North East by these families.11

Born a slave in Maryland in 1815, Reverend Henry Highland Garnet became a

leading abolitionist and clergyman, celebrated for his skills as an orator.12 In 1842,

he stated his belief that responsibility for the abolition of slavery lay chiefly with the

whites. However, just a year later he changed his mind. At the National Negro Conven-

tion in Buffalo, New York, on 16 August 1843, Garnet stood before the delegates and

gave a speech entitled ‘An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America’,

which cemented the idea that freedom would come about politically. In this impas-

sioned speech, which has come to be known as his ‘Call to Rebellion’, Garnet encour-

aged slaves to revolt against their masters. He electrified the convention as he urged

slaves to take action to gain their own freedom:

You had far better all die – die immediately, than live slaves, and entail your wretch-edness upon your posterity. . . . However much you and all of us may desire it, thereis not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed,let it all come at once – rather die freemen, than live to be the slaves.13

Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison and many other abolitionists thought

Garnet’s ideas were too radical. However, they would not seem too radical for the

North East of England. In 1850, Newcastle woman Anna Henry Richardson was

spearheading the Free Labour Produce Movement, an organisation opposing the

use of products produced by slave labour. The movement paid for Garnet to visit

Britain, and appointed him their travelling agent. His family followed him to

Britain a year later. Here he remained for two-and-a-half years, undertaking a rigorous

schedule of engagements. Both James McCune Smith and Frederick Douglass felt he

was doing especially well because he was the first American black of completely

African descent to appear in Britain to speak in support of abolition. A constant

theme throughout his life was the necessity for blacks to take their destiny into

their own hands.14

The Gateshead Observer of 28 September 1850 reproduces Garnet’s speech to an

anti-slavery meeting in Newcastle. In this address, Garnet encouraged the consump-

tion of free-labour products in preference to slave labour products, arguing that if

slaves sold well in America then cotton was sure to be high in Liverpool and vice

versa. Britain was the main prop and stay of slavery. Slavery would end if Britain with-

drew its custom. He saw the only way of abolishing slavery was to render it unprofi-

table.15 As this speech suggests, Garnet was a fine representative of those abolitionists

who made the argument against slavery in part by demonstrating their intellectual

equality with whites. Garnet brought a legitimacy and authenticity to the international

movement that his white co-workers could never bring, and for this reason he was an

important figure amongst abolitionists. He was independent in forming his own views

and bold in expressing them. At an early date, he helped articulate many of the themes

of black nationalism, including self-improvement and emigration.

Slavery and Abolition 253

William Fifefield

Garnet was not the only black person in the North East who believed that black people

must take their control of their destiny. On Saturday, 18 January 1834, the following

obituary appeared in the Newcastle Chronicle:

On Wednesday morning last, in the Tuthill Stairs, in this town, aged 65, WilliamFifefield, a man of colour, and a native of the West Indies. He resided in thistown nearly 40 years, and, during that time he filled the situation of longdrummer in various local regiments. First in the Newcastle Volunteers, under thecommand of Col. Blakeney; next in the Usworth Legion, and again in the NewcastleVolunteers, after the peace of 1802; he subsequently joined the 2nd Durham LocalMilitia, and finished his military career in the South Tyne Yeomanry Hussars. To fillup the vacuity of his time, he plied for many years between this town and Shields onthe river with a ‘comfortable’ [a partially covered sailing boat], but the march ofsteam threw him into the shade. He was much respected in his differentavocations.16

We do not know who put the notice of Fifefields’s death in all the Newcastle papers,

but it may have been either his family or an old military comrade. However, the

amount of newspaper space his death occupied is an indication of the respect and

high regard he enjoyed within the region. He was buried at St John’s Church, Newcas-

tle. William Fifefield came from St Kitts, but when or how is unclear.17 Once in

Newcastle, Fifefield gave his trade as a millwright. This was a skilled trade valued

both on sugar plantations and in the agriculture and industry of the North East. Fife-

field married Margaret Wintrup, a farmer’s daughter from Northumberland. They had

two children and lived in Bailiffgate, near the Castle.

The Newcastle Volunteers had been formed in 1795 to protect the locality against

invasion by the forces of the French Revolution. Other units followed, to be disbanded

during the brief peace of 1802–1803 and then reformed during the Napoleonic War of

1803–1815. Fifefield must have volunteered as soon as he arrived in Newcastle. He was

still listed as a drummer on the rolls of the volunteers in 1810, when he was already 41,

and may have continued after the war.18 Fifefield would have used his ‘comfortable’ to

carry passengers to and from North and South Shields with the tides. The first steam

passenger boat appeared in 1814 and by 1831 there were over thirty of them on the

Tyne. This would have affected Fifefield’s work, but ‘comfortables’ appear in pictures

of the Tyne into the late 1820s, and it is probably through plying this trade that he

became so well known within the area. William Fifefield left a legacy in the form of

a son, William Thomas Fifefield, who became a hairdresser, and by the time of his

father’s death had a shop in the Groat Market. He married Mary Ann Sessford.

William Thomas Fifefield could sign his own name, his father could not.

Conclusion

During the activities of 2007, the soul singer Beverley Knight spoke out about the

legacy of slavery by saying:

254 Sheree Mack

I don’t live my life from the ‘I–am-the-daughter-of-the-oppressed’ standpoint.Instead, I think of the heroes – Paul Bogle, Nanny, Sam Sharp and indeedWilberforce, who fought to give me the freedom I have today. The perpetuationof stereotypes is a legacy of slavery; black people as aggressive, black people asoverly sexual, black people as constantly late (!), etc. Very tired views. Theparadox is that while we hate the labelling, some of us, particularly the young,have confused these stereotypes with ‘proper’ culture, and hang on to them in thename of ‘keeping it real’. The other legacy is the lack of expectation of blacksuccess.19

We, as black people, are still affected by the legacy of the past, the legacy of slavery. Take

the recent outcry caused by James Watson’s comments on the gloomy prospects

for Africa. A Nobel Prize winner for his part in the revolutionary discovery of the

workings of DNA, Watson said: ‘All our social policies are based on the fact that

their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.’ He

added there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal, but ‘people

who have to deal with black employees find this is not true’.20

I believe that the three voices I explored in this article were successful within their

lives, whether they were in service, raising a family or rallying the call for emancipa-

tion. These people did not forget their past, but knew their past and carried it with

them as they negotiated a new life for themselves far from home. It was Bob Marley

who sang in Redemption Song,

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;None but ourselves can free our minds.21

I believe black people in Britain need to know the past, the details of slavery and the

slave trade, as a way of shaping our futures, our beliefs, values, ideas and behaviours.

Personally, I still have issues about calling the North East my home, but I have no issue

with claiming the black presence in the North East as my history.

My great grandfather on my maternal side was from Ghana. I think he came over in

1914. His daughter, my grandmother, took great pains to tell me that he was the first

black man in Newcastle. Maybe in my child’s mind, I exaggerated this family ‘fact’ to

make him the first black man in Newcastle and not just Newburn, the small village in

West Newcastle where my family grew up. Today, I know she must have said Newburn,

because my research has indicated that there were a lot more black men and women

living, working, talking and travelling in the North East than I had been led to believe

in the past. Through my work I hope that I have contributed to the ongoing task of

readdressing the silence and providing space for those lost voices, names and faces

of history to be heard, recognised and remembered.

Negotiating the Ship on Our Heads, Today

Those eight African childrensmuggled into Newcastledestined for Britain’s sex traderemind me of the 12 millionmiddle passaged blacks,

Slavery and Abolition 255

in the hold, in the darkcrossing the Atlantic Ocean,so the Empire can become ‘greater’.Lost African identities, names lost in history.Names lost in North East history.

Mary Ann BlythGeorge SyllaOlaudah EquianoJames CrowBill RichmondCharles ReedHenry Highland GarnetFrederick DouglassSarah P. RemondWilliam Wells BrownCharles Lennox RemondMr W. WatsonAfricanus MaxwellNathaniel PaulWilliam Fifefield

Acknowledgments

The author acknowledges the continued support of Peter Livsey, a volunteer within the

Archival Mapping and Research Project, Kay Easson, Librarian and the Literary and

Philosophical Society, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Notes

[1] The poetic extracts in this contribution are taken from Mack, The White of the Moon.

[2] See Charlton, Remembering Slavery 2007.

[3] McCord, The Great Reform Act, 2.

[4] The monument is included in the English Heritage list of sites of memory connected with

abolition (http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.17489).[5] Charlton, Remembering Slavery 2007, 6. Sean Creighton’s summary is accessible here – and has

a list of known black servants/slaves in the region before abolition: http://history1.0catch.com/pdf/Overview%20of%20Slavery%20&%20Abolition%20at%20N%20East%20Sean%20

Creighton.pdf/[6] Personal conversations with Miss Sauda Motara, Trainee Curator (History), Tyne and Wear

Museums.

[7] O’Donnell, ‘There’s Death in the Pot!’.

[8] Charlton, Hidden Chains, is another outcome of the archival project.

[9] David Monteith, quoted in Brooks, ‘Freedom at any Cost’.

[10] Jennings ‘The Geordie Slave’.

[11] Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 111–112.

[12] Garnet, ‘Africans in America’ Resource Bank.

[13] Henry Highland Garnet, ‘An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America, Buffalo, NY,

1843’ (http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/etas/8/).

256 Sheree Mack

[14] Blackett, Building an Antislavery Wall, 119–123.

[15] Garnet, ‘Free Labour Movement Speech’.

[16] Obituaries, Newcastle Chronicle, 18 January 1834.

[17] The obituary has William Fifefield as ‘a man of colour’. He is described as ‘a negro from St

Kitt’s’ in the Parish Register of St Nicholas, Newcastle, 23 December 1804, at the baptism of

his first child.

[18] The muster rolls of the Newcastle Volunteers are in the Northumberland Lieutenancy Papers in

the Northumberland Record Office, Woodhorn. He died in 1834, aged 65.

[19] Beverley Knight, quoted in Beckett, ‘Heirs to the Slavers’.

[20] James Watson, quoted in Milmo, ‘Fury at DNA Pioneer’s Theory.

[21] Bob Marley, ‘Redemption Song’, Somewhere in Africa (LP), Arista, 1983.

References

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Blackett, Richard J. M. Building an Antislavery Wall: Black Americans in the Atlantic Abolitionist

Movement, 1830–1860. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983.

Brooks, Libby. “Freedom at any Cost.” The Guardian, 24 February 2007. Available at: http://lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk/family/story/0,,2020036,00.html/

Charlton, John. Remembering Slavery 2007: A Brief Guide to the Archive Mapping and Research

Project. Newcastle: Literary and Philosophical Society, 2007.

———. Hidden Chains: The Slavery Business and North East England. Newcastle: Tyne Bridge, 2008.

Garnet, Henry Highland.“Africans in America” Resource Bank, Available at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p1537.html/

———. “The Free Labour Movement Speech.” Gateshead Observer, 28 September 1850. Available

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Slavery and Abolition 257