October is Black History Month, a time to celebrate Black History, heritage and culture. The theme for 2022 is Time For Change: Action Not Words. As part of this, there is an acknowledgement of the need to come together around a shared common goal to achieve a better world for everyone. Part of the aims of Black History Month is to explore our national and regional past to find out more about the contributions made by Black people in all spheres. In doing so, we will become more aware of the positive achievements and contributions of Black people alongside relevant colonial history.
One of the Society’s contributions to this year’s Black History Month is a Black History masterclass on Saturday 15 October with Paul Crooks, a specialist in African Caribbean genealogy. A specialist in African Caribbean genealogy and speaker, Paul spent over 13 years searching public records for his West African ancestors enslaved in Jamaica during the period of transatlantic enslavement Century. By 1998 he was acclaimed as the first person of African Caribbean descent to trace his roots.
In the masterclass, ‘Using Slave Compensation Records to Trace Ancestry’, Paul will reveal his personal journey successfully tracing uncompensated ancestors once enslaved in Jamaica, and evidence of compensation (related to the Slave Compensation Act of 1837) linked to the enslavement of his ancestors on the Cousins Cove Sugar Plantation, Jamaica. Paul will explain how to research the lives of slaves and slave owners using public records related to the 1837 act, and how to bring the stories of your ancestors to life. In 1833, the British government passed legislation to end its system of enslavement. Britain raised the equivalent of £20 billion to compensate Britain’s slave owners for the ‘loss of human property.’ It was the largest state-sponsored payout in British history before the banking crisis in 2008, with taxpayers’ money going straight into the pockets of people who had already profited from the system of slavery.
Although slavery was abolished in Saint Vincent in 1834, conditions remained harsh for former slaves and more recent immigrant agricultural workers up to the early 1900s. Among those whose ancestors were slaves on the island was leading West Indian cricketer Charles Augustus Ollivierre (1876-1949).
Ollivierre was born in St Vincent to a cricket-supporting family. Before the creation of test matches, he began playing first-class cricket for Trinidad. He arrived in England in 1900 on tour with the West Indies cricket team. His younger brothers would also go on to represent the West Indies at the game. He remained in the country and played first-class cricket for Derbyshire until 1907. Ollivierre was a pioneer among Caribbean cricketers, being the first black West Indian to play for an English county (Derby Daily Telegraph, 11 August 1950; Findmypast).
Ollivierre’s cricket prowess was regularly noted in British newspapers after his first appearance in the country in 1900. Although he dropped out of first-class cricket after 1907 owing to eye trouble, his performances continued to be regaled into the 1950s by those who remembered him and others he knew of him by repute. In the Daily Herald of 21 July 1933 (p8), the Trinidadian journalist and historian CLR James (1901-1989) wrote, “Far and away the finest player of the 1900 West Indies team had been C. A. Olliverre [sic], who remained to qualify for Derbyshire and never played for the West Indies again.” Ollivierre’s career as a batsman at Derbyshire was outstanding: he was the first amateur to hit a double century for the county. On one occasion, he made an impressive 320 runs.
Derbyshire had welcomed Ollivierre in 1900, but historian Jack Williams’ book Cricket and Race (Oxford: Berg, 2001) indicates that at least one of Ollivierre’s Derbyshire colleagues was unhappy playing alongside a black cricketer but that, despite racism inherent in English cricket at the time, Ollivierre’s presence may have “created goodwill towards non-whites among [Derbyshire’s] white supporters” (Williams, page 20).
Ollivierre remained in England for the rest of his life. The Nottingham Journal, 26 March 1949 (p. 2) reported his death at the age of 72 in Pontefract, West Yorkshire.
After her surviving parent Pamela passed away in 1866, at 30 years of age, Mary Jane was seemingly unable to live independently. Although she had ten siblings, most had either left Wiltshire or died by this date.
The 1871 census reveals that Mary Jane (here “Jane Ashley”) went to live in Brighton with milkman Peter Parsons (c1829-1899) and his wife, Ann, who was Mary Jane’s fourth eldest sibling. For this year, the disability questions on the census were extended to include “imbeciles”, “idiots”, and “lunatics”. This census entry identifies Mary Jane as an “Idiot”. The language used in this period is regarded as offensive today. Idiocy was used at this time to describe someone with an intellectual disability who was seen as having a mental age of fewer than three years old.
The following passage from the 1871 Census Report entitled “Causes of idiocy”, gives some insight into how 36-year-old Mary Jane would have been viewed at the time:
The principal causes of idiocy and imbecility are spoken of by those who have studied the subject as distinctly recognised; they are connected with physical or mental weakness, or with abnormal conditions, either the fault or the misfortune of parents. Residence in deep valleys, damp and unwholesome climate, crowded dwellings or other unhealthy conditions, intermarriages among a limited number of families, and more especially where weakness of brain already exists,—these, are allowed to be predisposing causes, and as they are obviously within human control, the hope may be entertained that the extent of this affliction may be limited in the future.
Sources
- Black History Month official website https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/
- Jeffrey Green, Black Edwardians : Black people in Britain, 1901–1914 (Frank Cass, 1998)
- Jack Williams, Cricket and Race (Oxford: Berg, 2001)
- Wikipedia entry of Charles Ollivierre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ollivierre
- Todmorden Advertiser and Hebden Bridge Newsletter, 6 September 1901, page 6 (Findmypast)
- The Nottingham Journal, 26 March 1949, page 2 (Findmypast)
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