The African princess who was Victoria’s goddaughter
She was an orphaned princess sold into slavery – but became Queen Victoria’s goddaughter.
The monarch paid for Sarah Forbes Bonetta’s education and was also godmother to her daughter.
Now a new portrait of Sarah, an accomplished musician and linguist, has been put on display at Victoria’s former home on the Isle of Wight – Osborne house.
Sarah, the daughter of a West African king, lost her parents in a war in 1848.
She was given to British naval officer Captain Frederick Forbes as a ‘diplomatic gift’ at the age of seven in 1850
‘Sharp and intelligent’
after he travelled to the African kingdom of Dahomey – present-day Benin – to urge it to halt its slave trade.
her original name, Aina, was changed on the way to england – she took the names of the captain and his ship, the hMS Bonetta. Sarah was later brought to Windsor Castle and introduced to Victoria, who described her as ‘sharp and intelligent’ in her diary.
She arranged to have the little girl brought up as her protegee among the middle classes.
Sarah married African merchant James Pinson Labulo Davies in 1862 and named her first daughter after the Queen, but died of tuberculosis in 1880 aged 37.
The new portrait of Sarah in her wedding dress is on display at Osborne house, where Victoria used to meet her. The picture was unveiled as english heritage vowed to do more to highlight links between its properties and the slave trade. It said it was commissioning portraits of other historical black figures associated with its sites ‘whose stories, like Bonetta’s, have been previously overlooked’. The organisation said: ‘Black history is part of english history and, while we know we have more to do, english heritage is committed to telling the story of england in full.’ It said it was carrying out ‘in-depth research’ into links between the slave trade and its sites, which will be published next year. Artist hannah Uzor, who painted the new portrait, said it ‘challenges our assumptions about the status of black women in Victorian Britain’.
Meanwhile, a statue is to be erected of London’s first black mayor. John Archer was born in Liverpool in 1863 to a Barbadian ship steward and an Irish mother.
he studied medicine and became a professional singer before being elected mayor of Battersea in 1913. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the local council yesterday announced a £10,000 fund to pay for the statue.