| Notes | On a British diplomatic mission in June and July 1850, John Beecroft and Frederick Edwyn Forbes could not negotiate ending the slave trade with Gezo, King of Dahomey. Despite this failure, Gezo indicated his willingness to continue the dialogue in future years. As had been typical with British officials for over a century, the king offered gifts to Britain and Queen Victoria. Documented in the diplomats’ journals, the presents included textiles, honorary stools, rum, cowrie shells, and ‘each one girl to wash [their] clothes’. Beecroft and Forbes accepted the two children, and they joined three other enslaved soldiers from Atakpamé whom the diplomats had purchased to save from human sacrifice during Dahomey’s hwenùwá or ‘Annual Customs’. Although one of the captives died from illness, they removed the remaining four people from the capital, Abomey, with the intention of ‘liberating’ them according to the Abolition Act of 1807. From Ouidah, they took two men and two girls to HMS Bonetta moored off the coast and they sailed to Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea. After, Beecroft took command of HMS Jackal, bringing with him the two men and one of the girls to Fernando Po, where they likely remained for some time. Forbes, meanwhile, sailed the HMS Bonetta along with the other girl to England, where she immediately became a media sensation. By 9 November 1850, Forbes formally presented the girl to Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. At St. Mary’s church in Winkfield eight days later, newspapers reported how curious onlookers witnessed ‘the Christening of the little Dahoman Princess… by the names of Sarah Forbes Bonetta’. Thereafter, Queen Victoria took her under umbrella and ‘sponsored’ her as a ‘special favourite’, ‘protégée’, and ‘ward’.
With this unique story, there is a large collection of primary sources by and about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, (m. Davies), aka ‘Ina’, and ‘Etta’, although she mostly went by ‘Sally’. |
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| Sources | The National Archives, England, FO 84/827, "Lieutenant Forbes’ Journal," 5 July 1850. The National Archives, England, FO 84/816, "Consul Beecroft's Journal," 5 July 1850; Frederick E. Forbes, Dahomey and Dahomeans: Being the Journals of Two Missions to the King of Dahomey, and Residence at His Capital, in the Year 1849 and 1850, vol. 2 (London: Longman, Brown, and Longmans), 206-209; Walter Dean Myers, At Her Majesty's Request: An African Princess in Victorian England (New York: Scholastic Inc. 1998); Robin Law, (ed.), Consul John Beecroft’s Journal of His Mission to Dahomey, 1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). |
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