The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho

Author/Guide: Paterson Joseph

Why a Booktrail?

1746: Meet Charles Ignatius Sancho: his extraordinary story, hidden for three hundred years, is about to be told.

ISBN: 978-0349702391
Genre: Historical, Inspired by true events

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

It’s 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help – a kindly duke who taught him to write – is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.

So how does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery?

It’s time for him to tell his story, one that begins on a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean, and ends at the very centre of London life. And through it all, he must ask: born amongst death, how much can you achieve in one short life?

Locations

Reset

England - London
A: 19 Charles St
B: St Margaret's Church
C: Montagu House
D: Blackheath Library
E: King Charles Street - Plaque: Ignatius Sancho

Travel Guide

Georgian London and Charles Ignatius Sancho

Charles Ignatius Sancho was a British abolitionist who lived from 1729 to 1780. He was also a composer and writer.

His account of slavery – The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho – was one of the earliest accounts of African slavery written in English from a first-hand experience.

Charles was born on a slae ship in the middle of Atlantic and was sold into slavery in the Spanish colony of New Granada. After his parents died, Sancho’s owner took the two year old to Britain and gave him to three Greenwich sisters, where he remained their slave for eighteen years. It wasnt’t long before he ran away to the Montagu House in Blackheath, There. he learned to read and write and the owner encouraged Sancho’s budding interest in literature. After Sancho left this house, he started his own business as a shopkeeper, and started to write and publish various essays, plays and books.