1961-11-28 — Page 6

THE CHINA MAIL TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1961.

ONE NEGRO TO EVERY

FORTY

ON

IN HER SPEECH FROM THE THRONE THE QUEEN SAID THAT THE GOVERNMENT WOULD INTRODUCE LEGISLATION TO CONTROL THE OF BRITISH SUBJECTS FROM OTHER PARTS OF THE

TODAY IN LONDON, THERE IS ONE COLOURED PERSON TO EVERY 166 WHITE, YET 200 YEARS AGO THERE WAS.....

IMMIGRATION COMMONWEALTH,

LONDONERS

by Lewis De Fries

oured beggar, but the moneyed classes scorned him.

Rich, 9Bk-coated dandies, rat- tling through the streets of Georgian London in their brightly painted high-wheeled carriages, shouted and cursed at

trying to dodge the tramc.

N June 22nd 1772 a Negro named James the swarthy-skinned beggars

Somersett walked dazed but happy out of the court of the Lord Chief Justice into the London sunshine. Five minutes before he had been slave. Now he was a free man.

a

And in declaring him free, the Judge, Lord Mansfield, made English history. For his decision completely changed the status of the 25,000 Negroes in the country, 15,000 of whom were own- ed as slaves. Lord Mansfield had in fact said that English law did not recognise slavery.

"The state of slavery

is of such a nature that islands and other colonies, they were sold to fashionable English

it is incapable of being introduced on any reason, moral or practi- cal, but only by positive law" he told the court. "It is odious. Whatever incovenience therefore

may follow from the de- cision, I cannot say this is allowed or proved by the law of England and therefore the black must be discharged."

Until that moment, any Negro, whether or not he had arrived in England as a slave, could be taken into an English household and forced to work without

*

fames for a small sum.

10

DISGUST

drink

chirolate with

"Hörk, hark, the dogs do

bork,

"The beggars are coming

to town,

"Some in rag and some in

tag "And some in velvet

gown."

But for the efforts of a small group of abolitionists who had brought the Somersett case as a matter of principle, hundreds

would have died of cold and hunger.

Each day the Old Jewry house of the abolitionist leader, Gran ville Sharp. was besieged by Negroes begging for charity.

Powdered ladies in tall wigs, Sharp, a Government employee tripping down the steps of bow- with little means, was at his windowed mansions on their way wits end He and his friends or

ganised a fund out of which 400 friends, wrinkled up their noses Negroes received weekly allow- in disgust and stared haughtily ances, but there was seldom en- through their quizzing-glasses at ough money available to enable London's new class of paupers. them to keep themselves decent-

ly

Most of the free Negroes in the English capital made their homes

Sinong the already over- crowded back streets of

Bast

а

London. Dazed and bewildered they found themselves in strange world of squalor and vice. drunkenness and debau- But after the Somersett case chery. It was world which the powdered ladies and the dendies of the West End renounced with a shudder laut did nothing to -

the days of young Negro hoys dressed in exotic clothes and treated like lap-dogs complete with padlocked collars and name-lags,

were over.

BEGGARS

Many now enjoyed the status of paid domestic servants and

one or twu ever made a mark on society as personalities in their own right. But others, afraid they might be smuggled ut of the country to lands be yond the jurisdiction of the law, left their former masters and named the streels looking for work

Few of the

wanderers found

prove.

FORCES

smuggle them out of England. And they tried to maintain slavery in London itself.

Frequently Sharp managed to obtain writs of habeas corpus only just in time to stop Nagroes the country." He also leaving persuaded the authorities to issue warrants for houses to be search. ed and slaves released. Infuriat- ed masters were forced by the Government to pay wages for their slaves' entire length of service. One rich City merchant was faced with a wage bill of 14 years.

As time passed black beggars continued to roam London and other cities. In 1786 Sharp and his friends devised a scheme for reducing their numbers by founding the African colony of Sierre Leone. Posters advertis- ing

а Government-sponsored passage to this new haven were put up throughout the country.

PIONEERS

In February, 1787, a ship salled from Wapping with

Fifty 411 settlers.

white prostitutes, overpowered by drink and carried aboard. came round $9 the ship cleared Gravesend, find themselves bound for Africa as the wives of the black pioneers.

10

But this first emigration was soldiers doomed due to poor climate. Sharp Family after family went down were harder with fever.

When the American War of Independence broke out three years after the Mansfield judg- ment, many ex-slaves joined the forces. For a short lime the pro- blem was eased, but when, Bri- tain was drummed out of the American A few of the coloured people

colonies and former slaves of Loyalist households were lucky

enough to have a joined the demobilised rond over their heads, but many and sailors in England, shared the wretched existence and

forced to sleep in

his friends of beggars

pressed than ever. shop doorways, dirty little pav-

Later, a few Negroes went to Not only did they have to beg the West Indies as free labour- ed earts and among the tomb- sto

on behalf of their black friends ers. But most of Britain's col- in churchyards. stones

Some

at a time when thousands of the oured community stayed. They earned a few coppers by danc-

new white poor from across the inter-married and eventually ing in the streets in West Lon-

Atlantic were demanding help, were absorbed in the white po- don. Others, more venturesome. but they became tinkers and took to the attempts by supporters of slavery sailow-skinned

had to contend with pulation. Their descendants,

with road.

faintly to flout the law. Sharp's up negroid features, con occasionally ponents kidnapped Negroes to be seen in England.

GROTESQUE

They were dressed in a grotes- que variety of clothing-pitiful remnants of the strange alik costumes from their slave days, cast-off coats and gowns which a few kindly householders gave then: when they called asking for alms.

wages. But for most of England's employment. Most became beg coloured population a far gars, worsening a grave social higher percentage of the com- problem in & country already munity than toxlay working in terming with men and women England meant merely a change dependent on the Poor Law. of misters.

They could not even claim the

gi of parishioners to

them money to keep

alive.

Meagh the poorer quarters they were received kindly; there was no Starving, ridden with vertais, colour bar and the average they wandered aimlessly around citizen, despite his troubles, the busy streets, pushed im- looked on the Negroes as people patiently aside by passers-by, of his own kind.

flinching from the whips of irate coachmen if they dared step into the road.

SOLD

They had been brought from the West Indies and Amertes in the service of merchants home on leave or business. Be- Cause the passage hack was costly and slaves could be ob tained easily in the Caribbean

The poor could be of little practical help. Only in wealthy circles were there means to make life bearabic for the col-

The mocking voices of London urchins rang in their cars-

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TOPICAL CARTOONS

"I'm very much afraid, dear lady, that, given the present composition of the Cabinet, any hope of having them classified as migrants under the Act are doomed to

disappointment."

INMIGRATION OFFICER

*Unfortunately, Sir, it appears that the applicant only speaks Erse."

Sin-and the penalty of

the pig-cart...

Staphorst, Holland. THE golden wire coils

on the burnished helmet which covered 13-year-old Marijke Van Meer's close-cropped hair nodded vehemently.

She said: "Of course I will go with a boy before I marry him,

and his child will be there, un- born, when I go to church. But if I ever turn to another man, then I too will deserve to go to the pig cari.

the

We were standing in village street of Staphorst, where, on a clear night you can see the lights of gay, modern Amster- dam 90 miles away across the flat Dutch countryside.

Stones

This is Staphorst, where a man anti á woman were dragged from their homes and driven

through the spotless-

by

Rosalie

"Of course I am bitter about it, but where else can I go? "I will never see her again unless leave Staphorst and she does too,

1

毒

Macrae

pouch to the young

man, it means that the seal of parental approval has been given.

But, as Madame Anijke. Hoek, wife of a local garage proprietor Staphorst is a different world. explained: The tobacco pouch

from Amsterdam, is not conclusive. this prosperous Dutch

"Here in Staphorst we are an countryside, you see thousands island of good living in a world

more contem- of evil. of houses, each

To preserve our rell- Porary than the one before. To gian we must keep up blinds are drawn, and you see population, room after room with its white lamps, modern paintings, trailing indoor plants.

Then Staphorst- outwardly desd and still, every window blanked with a black blind,

Tobacco

Traditions

our

"No Staphorst girl will get married unless she knows that her chosen husband can give her children. And after the young man has Broked ly clean streets in a pig-cart for

the pipe of five hours, spat upon, and pelted

family acceptance, the family Where there are glimpses will go to bed, leaving himself with mud

and stones, because through the dark screens, they and their daughter together in they were accused by the church show a stern kitchen, the family the kitchen. elders more Calvinistic than Bible on the table, the family Calvin himself of adultery.

"If after 1hree months the girl

IS

New York, Monday

SELL-OUT 'America's greatest threat'

JP got Mr Thomas Anderson, full of indigna- tion, at the National Indignation Convention at Dallas, Texas, recently and said: "It's time to hold some treason trials in America."

And 2,500 delegates jumped to their feet cheering.

Main cause of their indigna- tion is the training of Yugoslav pilots in the U.S.

for dying on my feet rather than living on my knees," yelled Anderson attacking "Su- cialism" in President Kennedy's Administration.

"I'm for Kennerly showing less profile and

le and more courage," added this fiery editor of a farming Ten-

newspaper in Nashville, nesne kneering at the Prest dent's best seller "Profiles in Courage."

mind. It is studying the "freen turtle "which has a brain com- parable to the electronic micro- miniature systems of computers" as part of a bid to improve long-range detection devices,

INGLISH teacher Harty

Wyman WBs frod "big brother bostume school Inspectors who had been watching him.

а

The trouble with Harry he class of high school

gave his

Peter Evans

"I'm for giving Red China a students at Wrenshail, Minne- sent in UNO our seat.

sota, George Orwell's "1984" f "America is losing its guts. read. Pinks are people too yellow to be Red. "I'm

for the John Birch Society. It's the best leadership, the best plan i know to save America front Socialism, insol vency, and surrender."

"Obscene and foo explicit in its treatment of sex," say's school superintendent Charles Hedes gard.

The population of Afneries is

As the crowd foared again the now 184,188,000,-File Cratus

said grimly: Burran eslimated recently, "America's greatest threat is not

Nashville hero

fall-out-it's sell-out,"

Americans make good

And on that note the conven- D sonst well, you judge tion decided to recess until next According to a Michigan Univer month. It promises "a giant meeting that will

they are Government with its determina- opposed five to one to having tlan."

pensioned-parents- - living", th

sity

shake the

Murvey

them.

But they were kind-hearted JULIE WILSON and New enough to vote zwo to dne. In York producer Michael Me- favour of financially supporting Aloney were married the other mom and pop if need beep day in Omaha, Nebraska. It was

"

a third marriage for 36-year-old Julle takeover" star of three

London shows. She took over

MAI

[AIN attraction in a Fide

street carnival I passed the other day with roundabout and swings and prgent was big, gleaming fire engine

It was covered by swarms of East Side children, for the show was put on by the fire brigade in a new drive to make young New Yorkers are conscious:

Last year, New York had more than twice as many fires 80,941 as Landon, Tokyo and Paris had together.

"AZZ "star

is singing a new kind of Dinah Washington

the leads from other alars in blues. For she is charged with "Kiss Me Kate "Anna get threatening her dress designer" Your Gun," and "South Pacific." with a gun.

Soon she will be in London again for a two-month esbaret engagement.

It

Dinah, aged 37, to eat to have pulled the gun on Lois Green when she tried to collect a £200 bill, and to have said, Get out or 1 blow your brains out." She appeared in court.

you like green turtle soup, take heart. For the U.S. Navy has been looking after ONE of my favourite Man your interests.

hatian restaurants, put a “No has just dumped some tipping" sign over the cloak- 30,000 green turtle bables in the room, 1 noticed the piqued Caribbean to help replenish the attendant had written beschik diminishing stock.

If you it:

can read this But the navy has more than you're too darn clo your future soup supplyin -London Express Šefuldt).

THE RABBI WHO BECAME

A TOP COMEDIAN

New York. gregation would tell

cabarets, has now drawn two, NGAETONER

young Rabbis from the pulpit into the limelight.

The woman is typically ment

gathered uprightly around, Dutch:

is not found to be with child,THE, airen call of "show after each sermon, flaxen-haired Marla

And occasionally you see her father and mother will 48-year-old wife of a

____*business,” which earlier local young man there sitting with

her to find another man, advise *

Finally, he took thetro workinan.

this year lured two young and started his Her adulterous vouch of tobacco and a plje be

In this odd village, the local hoclate" is 1-year-old Derk alde him. To the people of police force has been unable" Negro ministers out of their famous Barachi Timmerman, á

carpenter

Staphorst this means that there to take any action against the churches and into the Jewish:: resort o wife ave him

two

will be a marriage with the attack on the couple children, but she rarely spoke, !

next few months. Westgate local police say friends. He met Maria, When I spoke to the "Such action b

his

The

chief who had the same kind of hur

ahorater who told me the

by private citizens band say

her friends.

So many spiritual leaders are striation, way of marriage here, was our was declared Illegal in They saw each other secretly. Incredulous. But after a dozen Holland last year. But some

its

head.

that Staphorst is indessi a blace Dörk

Timmermern, wearing Which time bos left behind”. same rʊugh, homespun - brown. fizere, every cottage has a win, phirt and bag trousers as on dowed attic where the daughter that night talked to me about of the house sleeps,

Until the day that Staphorst lost or to such explanations it seem mes traditions die hard.note that a talent scout has to go to Jeft the pulpitan

his ordeal briefly, becedre behan from the over the fence three of the village wishes to marry her he church Piders clodd andeling stands below the sille window their evening nipell, Anything... Derk

Bald Bo

#repat

becoming professional enter- couple of yearri tainers, say the Broadway wits, to wonder "And, in a way, perhaps people are rights Aner Bil they divinity school to Endar are underving the stored thing materials of in have been sacrilest of family for

who currently belh featured

Bewildered

New comic

蜀辣

Puned to a m