Sara Forbes Bonetta

Sara Forbes Bonetta Davies

Sara Forbes Bonetta photographed by Camille Silvy in 1862
Born 1843
Oke Odan Ogun State
Died 15 August 1880 (age ~37)
Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal
Cause of death Tuberculosis
Resting place Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal
Residence
Nationality Nigerian-British
Other names Aina
Home town Abeokuta
Spouse(s) James Pinson Labulo Davies (m. 1862–80)
Children
  • Victoria Davies (daughter)
  • Arthur Davies (son)
  • Stella Davies (daughter)
Relatives John K. Randle (son-in-law)

Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843 – 15 August 1880[1] ) was a West African Egbado omoba of Yoruba royalty who was orphaned in intertribal warfare, sold into slavery, and in a remarkable twist of events, was liberated from enslavement and became a goddaughter to Queen Victoria. She was married to Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Victorian Lagos philanthropist.

Early life

Originally named "Aina", Sara was born in 1843 at Oke-Odan, an Egbado village.[2] In 1848, Oke-Odan was raided by a Dahomeyan army; Sara's parents died during the attack and she ended up in the court of King Ghezo as a slave at the age of five. Intended by her captors to become a human sacrifice, she was rescued by Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy, who convinced King Ghezo of Dahomey to give her to Queen Victoria;[3] "She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites," Forbes wrote later.[4]

Forbes named her Sara Forbes Bonetta, Bonetta after his ship the HMS Bonetta. Victoria was impressed by the young princess's exceptional intelligence, and had Sara raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.[5][6][7] In 1851 Sara developed a chronic cough, which was attributed to the climate of Great Britain. Her guardians sent her to school in Africa in May of that year, when she was eight,[5] and she returned to England in 1855, when she was 12. In January 1862 she was invited to and attended the wedding of the daughter of Queen Victoria.[8]

Marriage and children

A portrait of James Pinson Labulo Davies and Sarah Forbes Bonetta, photographed in London in 1862 by Camille Silvy

She was later given permission by the Queen to marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton in August 1862, after a period that was to be spent in the town in preparation for the wedding. During her subsequent time in Brighton, she lived at 17 Clifton Hill in the Montpelier area.[9]

Captain Davies was a Yoruba businessman of considerable wealth and the couple moved back to their native Africa after their wedding where they had three children: Victoria Davies (1863), Arthur Davies (1871), and Stella (1873).[10] Sarah Bonetta continued to enjoy a close relationship with Queen Victoria, to the point such that she and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther were the only Lagos indigènes the Royal Navy had standing orders to evacuate in the event of an uprising in Lagos.[10] Victoria Davies was also goddaughter of the Queen of the British Empire.[11] Victoria Matilda Davies married successful Lagos the doctor John K. Randle.[12] Many of her descendants (and her daughter's) now live in either England or Sierra Leone, while a separate branch, the aristocratic Randle family of Lagos, remains prominent in contemporary Nigeria.[11][13][14]

Death

The English Cemetery in Funchal, Madeira

Sarah Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis on 15 August 1880[1] in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, a Portuguese island.

Funchal with English Cemetery in background

Her husband, Captain Davies, erected a granite obelisk-shaped monument more than eight feet high in memory of Sarah Forbes Bonetta at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm.[15] The inscription on the obelisk reads:

IN MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA

WIFE OF THE HON J.P.L. DAVIES WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT MADEIRA AUGUST 15TH 1880

AGED 37 YEARS[1]

Sarah´s grave is number 206 in the British Cemetery of Funchal near the Anglican Holy Trinity Church, Rua Quebra Costas Funchal, Madeira. There is currently no headstone.[16]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Elebute, Adeyemo. The Life of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A Colossus of Victorian Lagos. Kachifo Limited/Prestige. p. 138. ISBN 9789785205763.
  2. ↑ Elebute, Adeyemo. The Life of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A Colossus of Victorian Lagos. Kachifo Limited/Prestige. pp. 41–42. ISBN 9789785205763.
  3. ↑ "Hidden histories: the first black people photographed in Britain – in pictures: Ethiopian princes in exile, boxing champs and 'Friendly Zulus' ... these previously unseen images of black people in the Victorian times show colonialism in all its contradictions: The black Victorians: astonishing portraits unseen for 120 years". The Guardian. 15 September 2014.
  4. ↑ Forbes, Frederick Edwyn (1851). Dahomey and the Dahomans: being the journals of two missions to the King of Dahomey. In two Volumes. London, Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans – via Hathi Trust.
  5. 1 2 Rappaport, Helen (2003). Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion. ABC-CLIO Biographical Companions. p. 307. ISBN 9781851093557.
  6. ↑ Wasson, Ellis (2009). A History of Modern Britain: 1714 to the Present. John Wiley & Sons. p. 235. ISBN 9781405139359.
  7. ↑ Marsh, Jan (19 November 2009). Black Victorians: Black People in British Art 1800–1900. Lund Humphries, University of Michigan. pp. 62, 86. ISBN 9780853319306.
  8. ↑ Annie C. Higgen (1879). "Queen Victoria's African Protégée". Church Missionary Quarterly Token. Church Missionary Society. p. 6 – via Google Books.
  9. ↑ Collis, Rose (2010). The New Encyclopaedia of Brighton: (based on the original by Tim Carder) (1st ed.). Brighton: Brighton & Hove Libraries. ISBN 978-0-9564664-0-2.
  10. 1 2 Elebute, Adeyemo. The Life of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A Colossus of Victorian Lagos. Kachifo Limited/Prestige. pp. 77–79. ISBN 9789785205763.
  11. 1 2 "Bonetta, Sarah Forbes (1843–1880)". Blackpast. Retrieved 14 August 2014.
  12. ↑ Adeloye, Adelola (1974). "Some early Nigerian doctors and their contribution to modern medicine in West Africa". Medical History. 18 (3): 286. doi:10.1017/s0025727300019621. PMC 1081580Freely accessible. PMID 4618303. Retrieved 23 May 2015.
  13. ↑ "The Nineteenth Century: 1862 - Sarah Forbes Bonetta - The African Princess in Brighton". Brighton and Hove Black History. Brighton and Hove Black History Project. Archived from the original on 8 May 2003.
  14. ↑ "Sarah Forbes Bonetta (Sarah Davies) (1843-1880), Goddaughter of Queen Victoria:Image archive". London: National Portrait Gallery,.
  15. ↑ Elebute, Adeyemo. The Life of James Pinson Labulo Davies: A Colossus of Victorian Lagos. Kachifo Limited/Prestige. pp. 111–119. ISBN 9789785205763.
  16. ↑ Register of Burials, Church Archives, Holy Trinity Church, Funchal

Further reading

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