[In the following essay, Gerzina presents a brief account of Sancho's life, reputation, and unique social position in eighteenth-century Britain.]

Unknown to most Americans and even to most British, eighteenth-century England was the home of approximately 14,000 black people. Most of these residents were servants, slaves and former slaves, brought to England by the owners of West Indian and American plantations. Many other blacks in England, however, were sailors, musicians, or students. Black students were sent to English schools by their African fathers or by missionaries to help young blacks learn the intricacies of trade and clerical work. Black women were scarce. The majority of the urban black population consisted of boys and men. Boys were favored as “fashion accessories” who could be dressed up in silks and turbans as an indication of wealth and leisure. Black men served as valets and footmen. As time passed many chose to remain in England, either because they were given their freedom or because they ran away into the London neighborhoods of St. Giles, Seven Dials, and St. Paul's where there was a thriving black community ready to assist those in need or in trouble.

Although Londoners were quite used to seeing black people on the street and in the home, Ignatius Sancho was unique. Born on a slave ship in 1729, Sancho was quickly orphaned when his mother died of an unknown disease and his father, like so many enslaved Africans, committed suicide rather than live as a slave. Sancho was taken to Greenwich, England, at the age of two, to live with three maiden sisters. As a child he was befriended by the duke of Montague. The duke recognized his quick mind, gave him books, and encouraged his learning.

When he was a teenager, the three white sisters, with whom Sancho lived, threatened to return him to West Indian slavery. Sancho escaped and pleaded with the duchess of Montague, now a widow, to take him in. The duchess took him into her household as a butler. At her death in 1751 the duchess left him £70 in cash and an annual income of £30. A young and inexperienced man, he quickly lost most of the money on women and gambling. But Sancho quickly reformed, marrying a West Indian woman named Anne Osborne. Giving up an earlier desire to try acting, Sancho composed music, read widely, and formed a circle of important friends.

In 1774 Sancho chose to use his annuity to set up a grocer's shop in London's fashionable Mayfair district. The steady arrival of five daughters and a son kept the Sanchos busy, but also delighted them. When it was quiet Sancho sat at the back of the store and wrote letters, referring to his family as the “Sanchonets and Sanchonettas.” His correspondence was so lively and observant that his letters were published in book form two years after his death.

The visitors to the Sancho establishment were astonishing for a grocer and his family, let alone a black one. The Montagues and their friends visited Sancho's store. David Garrick, the most famous actor of the century, was a close friend. The sculptor Nollekens visited and brought a bust of the writer Laurence Sterne, with whom Sancho also corresponded. Gainsborough painted Sancho's portrait. Samuel Johnson, widely considered the greatest mind of the century, planned to write his biography. Among his social circle were members of London's black community, many of them the servants of the whites who were his friends. When he died in 1780 of complications from gout and asthma, Sancho's obituary appeared in the prestigious Gentleman's Magazine.

Most of Sancho's letters are characterized by his affection, good humor, and unique view of English life, but he also used them to dispense advice. He tried to take under his wing the young black man Julius Soubise, whose pampered and protected position in the duchess of Queensberry's household was threatened by his penchant for spending money on women, fashion, and the theater. In another letter he complained that the owner of the famous young African-American poet Phillis Wheatley only had a claim to greatness because he happened to own a brilliant black woman.

In the 1960s and 1970s, as Sancho's letters came back into light, he was faulted for being overly patriotic, sentimental, and for assimilating into white British society. In recent years, however, a new appreciation of his unique position has developed. Sancho had virtually no firsthand experience of any country other than England. He felt keenly his position as both “a resident” in the country and at the same time an outsider because of his race. Explaining why he could never serve in public office, he wrote that he was “uttlerly unqualified through infirmities—as well as complexion.” Referring jokingly to himself as “a true Blackamoor,” “Sancho the big,” and “a cool black, jolly African,” he deliberately kept his race in the forefront. A devout Christian, Sancho was infuriated by “the unchristian and most diabolical usage of my brother Negroes—the illegality—the horrid wickedness of the [slave] traffic.”

At no point did Sancho ever forget that his unusual social position came with great responsibilities. As quite possibly the only middle-class, well-connected, and highly literate black man in all of Britain, his very visible existence could and did affect how thousands of people in that country viewed Africans and slavery. If his portrayal as a character in one eighteenth-century novel is to be believed, white Britons were willing to be instructed by and learn from their black neighbor. Today, with his letters back in print, he has new and appreciative readers on both sides of the Atlantic.