posted on Jun, 26 2017 @ 12:19 PM
a reply to:
stormcell
"Slavery was legal in Britain until 1772, and many of these Africans found themselves working as butlers or other household attendants in
aristocratic families.
This is quite simply not true. Slavery has not been legal in Britain since the Norman invasion, so near enough 1,000 years.
(For clarity, I know that this is the BBC saying this, and not you
stormcell)
Black people were well-established in Britain by Elizabethan times, and by the 18th Century there was a thriving black community (numbering thousands)
in London alone.
It's true that black people were a popular choice for house-servants, but that was mainly because they formed an exotic talking-point among the
well-to-do. Domestic servants had a considerably better quality of life than most other Britons (this was an era when people starved in the streets
and you could be hanged for stealing a potato). They were free to leave their jobs at any time they chose - but they seldom did, because they weren't
stupid!
One really well-known example is Caesar Picton, who was 'bought' by a British traveller in Senegal in the 1700s and presented to the Picton family in
South London. They basically adopted him and brought him up. He was dressed in a pageboy outfit as a child, but this was for 'decoration' only. When
he was mature enough to set out on his own, he did, and no-one even thought of stopping him. He took the family surname, and the family thought so
much of him that they left him handsome inheritances in their wills. He became a coal merchant, and very wealthy, living a gentleman's life until his
death in 1836.