Black Victorians Hidden in History | Book Review

BASW UK Chair, Julia Ross shares her reflections as part of Black History Month.
Black History Month

Black Victorians Hidden in History, exploring and celebrating the lives of Black Victorians, is by Keshia N Abraham and John Woolf.

I chose this particular book to review in Black History Month partly because it was recommended in my local library and partly because when I picked it up, I saw it was reviewed by David Lammy MP, who said,

‘Shows in vivid detail, how Black people didn’t just take part in the Victorian era, they shaped it’. 

It’s an amazing read, bursting full of detail, people jumping off the pages and an important contribution to my understanding of how slavery led to racism, rather than the reverse. Perhaps the most startling realisation came on my journey back from the Manchester based Social Work of the Year Awards. Black people are of course right now making and shaping history just as the Victorians did. The Awards, which BASW is the main line sponsor was packed full of social work winners full of joy at the achievements. This is history in the making right now. 

I enjoyed it also because it explores the sort of strength and resilience that we recognise in social work settings. The chapters I focused on most strongly on were the ones on prison and asylum, especially those on Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Broadmoor opened its doors in 1863-4 at a time when the Victorians were positive about the potential to reform the mentally ill. It describes the amazing revolutionary approach to the creation of Broadmoor with its ethos of health and wellbeing. It also vividly describes, amongst the 98 female patients and 221 male patients, a few black men who were sent to Broadmoor. In Chapters Three and Four we hear about John Flinn who showed disturbing behaviour walking around naked and throwing faeces and ripping his clothes. Staff said he was unintelligible. Flinn lived 38 years inside Broadmoor. There are other records of Black Victorians caught- temporarily or in more permanently circumstances of poverty or emergency in night asylums or rescue homes in Pentonville prison, Banardoes’ Children’s Home, Workhouses or just left on the Victorian streets. Sometimes history is all too recent. Early in my career, I vividly recall having to convince an elderly woman that going into a local Care Home was not like going into the workhouse. 

History is written by the victors, it is sometimes said. Black Victorians Hidden in History is a wonderfully subversive book then for it is packed with tales of unexpected successes. In 1805 Beethoven published his Violin Sonata No.9 and dedicated it to Rodolphe Kreutzer. It was dedicated to the great Mulatto composer Polgreen Bridgetower. The Prince of Wales employed him in his orchestra. The most intelligent people derided – and exploited – the abilities of black people. Charles Darwin was taught taxidermy by John Edmonstone who was from Guyana but he never mentioned Ecclestone by name; the teacher of taxidermy was Black. 

Black Victorians also usefully mentions sources which detail the history of successful black women and men like the footballer Walter Tull and the composer Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The main message of this book is that black Victorians were human – not a separate, let alone an inferior race. It is necessary reading as we celebrate this Black History month and indeed the Social Work Awards.