LMA launches database of historic BAME Londoners
The London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) has launched a digital database that reveals the lives of Londoners of African, Caribbean, Asian and indigenous heritage going back over 400 years.
Switching the Lens ( bit.ly/LMA-BAME) is the result of work by LMA staff and volunteers to uncover BAME individuals in the archive’s Anglican parish registers, which began in 2000. The records, which are free to search online, date from 1561–1840 and list over 2,600 individuals.
The database includes the 1765 baptism record of former slave Jonathan Strong. Abolitionist lawyer Granville Sharp represented him in a successful legal challenge to his enslavement in 1769.