In 1809 English men and women flocked to see a celebrity: a 'spotted boy' who had been brought to Bristol from the island of St Vincent in the Caribbean. He had been born on a plantation owned by a man named Mr Alexander to African parents in around June 1808 and was named George. George immediately began to attract attention, having black skin with white markings, something considered unusual for the time. Surviving portraits of the boy show that he had vitiligo, a long-term condition resulting in pale or white patches of skin that can sometimes appear symmetrically on the body. To his contemporaries though, the baby's appearance was a mystery and the writer Abel Bowen in 1840 stated that people visited him on the island, each charged a dollar to see him. Bowen wrote that there was some concern over the baby boy's safety, due, he said, to superstition about the colouring of his skin, and so his passage was arranged to England. However he also pointed out that the decision may also have been made with 'the prospect of a profitable disposal'.
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| George Alexander (Gratton), Wellcome Collection, Public Domain |
Aged just fifteen months old, George saw Bristol harbour lurching into view in September 1809 from his ship, The Friends of Emma. Accompanied by the owner of a travelling theatre called Mr Richardson, George faced crowds of eager visitors all curious to see him, for an admittance fee. He was baptised at the parish church of Newington in Surrey.
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| Bristol Harbour today |
Sadly, George experienced a swelling in his jaw which never healed, and he died on 3 February 1813 at just four years old. Mr Richardson, worried that George's body would be stolen, arranged for a brick vault to be built in a church in Great Marlow in Buckinghamshire. George was buried here. Richardson also commissioned a monument to George, with an epitaph praising him as having 'black and white... blended in his face' and described as 'Nature's prodigy'. It also mentions that George's move to Britain 'made his parents free', suggesting that they may have come with him and escaped slavery. He was certainly missed, the last few lines of epitaph including the line 'the loved infant finds an early grave, to bury him his loved companions came, and strewed choice flowers, and lisped his early fame; and some that loved him most, as if unblest, bedewed with tears the white wreath on his breast'.
Nineteenth-century writers like Bowen went to great pains to show that George was loved by Mr Richardson, who mourned him when he died. This may have been so, but there is nothing that can escape the fact that George was brought to England from his home in the Caribbean for monetary gain, in an example of early exploitation. His is a story that is not often told, but reveals something of the commercial activities and Black History of Georgian England. George tragically died very young, but his life should not be forgotten.
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Source:
Abel Bowen, Curious Sketches 1840, via archive.org
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