page_title: Ignatius Sancho
section_title: Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho
hierarchical_section_title: Ignatius Sancho / Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque for Ignatius Sancho in King Charles Street, City of Westminster.
context_page_description: Charles Ignatius Sancho was a British composer, actor, and writer. He is the only Briton of African heritage known to have been eligible and voted in an 18th-century general election through property qualifications. He gained fame in his time as "the extraordinary Negro", and to 18th-century British abolitionists he became a symbol of the humanity of Africans and immorality of the slave trade. The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, edited and published two years after his death, is one of the earliest accounts of African slavery written in English by a former enslaved person.
context_section_description: While his correspondence often included domestic issues, also commented on the political and literary life in 18th-century Britain, One of his more famous series of letters includes his eye-witness accounts of the Gordon Riots in June 1780. The angry mob passed outside his shop on Charles Street. The protest that began when Protestants protested against parliamentary extension of Catholic enfranchisement grew into a violent mob of 100,000 looting and burning parts of London.
  There is at this present moment at least a hundred thousand poor, miserable, ragged rabble, from 12 to 60 years of age, with blue cockades in their hats – besides half as many women and children, all parading the streets, the bridge, the park, ready for any and every mischief. Gracious God! What's the matter now? I was obliged to leave off – ths shouts of the mob, the horrid clashing of swords, and the clutter of a multitude in swiftest motion drew me to the door, when everyone in the street was employed in shutting up shop. It is now just five o'clock – the ballad-singers are exhasting their musical talents with the downfall of Popery, S-h and N-h, Lord S-h narrowly escaped with his life about an hour since' the mob seized his chariot going to the house, broke his glasses and, in struggling to get his lordship out, they somehow have cut his face.
  In 1782 Frances Crewe, a correspondent with Sancho, arranged for 160 of his letters to be published in the form of two-volumes entitled, The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African. The book sold very well, with more than 2000 subscribing to it. His widow received more than £500 in royalties. Joseph Jekyll provided the memoirs to the first edition, which was reprinted with each additional edition including the fifth edition published by Sancho's son in 1803.
  His son, William Leach Osborne, inherited the shop and transformed it into a printing and book-selling business. He printed a fifth edition of Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho with Memoirs of His Life by Joseph Jekyll and the frontispiece engraving by Bartolozzi, in 1803 at this shop on Charles Street.
  ''I am Sir an Affrican – with two ffs – if you please - & proud am I to be of a country that knows no politicians – nor lawyers--- nor [word deleted] … nor thieves of any denomination save Natural....''
caption: Plaque in King Charles Street, City of Westminster marking the location of Sancho's grocery store
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