The life of James Pinson Labulo Davies : a colossus of Victorian Lagos

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On her arrival in England, she was given the name 'Sarah Forbes Bonetta', after HMS Bonetta, on which Captain Forbes had sailed. In 1850, she was presented to the Queen at Windsor Castle. On 9th November, the Queen recorded in her journal: 'She is seven years old, sharp and intelligent and speaks English.' Herskovits Kopytoff, Jean (1965). A preface to modern Nigeria: the "Sierra Leonians" in Yoruba, 1830-1890. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 286. Others would say ‘He is a good man & though you don’t care about him now, will soon learn to love him.’ That, I believe, I never could do. I know that the generality of people would say he is rich & your marrying him would at once make you independent, and I say ‘Am I to barter my peace of mind for money?’ No – never! She is a perfect genius; she now speaks English well, and has a great talent for music. … She is far in advance of any white child of her age, in aptness of learning, and strength of mind and affection.

James Pinson Labulo Davies was born to James and Charlotte Davies in the village of Bathurst, Sierra Leone, then a British colony. His parents were recaptive Yoruba people liberated by the British West Africa Squadron from the Atlantic Slave Trade, and whose origins were in Abeokuta and Ogbomoso respectively. As far as I'm aware, the first person to plant cocoa on the main-land was the late Capt. J.P.L. Davies, a well known native of Lagos, who in 1882 used to tell me about the farm he had lately just made beyond the Protectorate of Lagos. [13] Philanthropy and establishment of CMS Grammar School [ edit ] Also figures like Captain Labulo Davies, Henry Carr, the inspector of schools of the Colony of Lagos who favoured assimilation with White Lagosians; Otunba Payne, the chief registrar of Lagos Supreme Court in 1877 who prepared the indigenous handbook for white judges to use, became blotted out from the history books once anti-colonial discourse took firm root. And slaveholders and beheaders like Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi were resurrected as heroes. Adedeji, J.A. The Church and the Emergence of the Nigerian Theatre, 1866-1914. Journal of Historical Society of Nigeria.6.1. p. 228.

2. She was liberated from slavery by a British Captain

As Queen Victoria’s protégée, Sarah was raised among the British upper class, and educated in both England and Sierra Leone. She became an accomplished pianist and linguist. In 1862 at St Nicholas’s Church in Brighton she married the merchant and philanthropist James Pinson Labulo Davies (1829-1906). These photographs were taken to mark their marriage. Captain Forbes renamed her Sara Forbes Bonetta, after himself and his ship HMS Bonetta. Forbes initially intended to raise her himself. However, Queen Victoria was impressed by the young woman's "exceptional intelligence", and had the woman, whom she called Sally, [8] raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class. [8] [9] [10] Today, the slavery disempowering Nigeria is enslavement to the pastor, enslavement to the caliphate, enslavement to the Quran, enslavement to word of God, enslavement to churches and the diviners; enslavement to superstitious thinking. Yet we are not even seeing their grip on our minds as slavery. We thank Professors Adeyemo Elebute and Karen Mann for showing us how overcoming the forces of enslavement and cooperating with agents of modernisation made an icon and a city. Originally named Aina (or Ina), [3] she was born in about 1843 in Oke-Odan, an Egbado Yoruba village in West Africa which recently had Oyo Empire, as a result of pressures largely caused by the Oyo Empire and the Kingdom of Dahomey warring.

Caroline Bressey, 'Of Africa's brightest ornaments: a short biography of Sarah Forbes Bonetta', Social & Cultural Geography, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2005

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Anim-Addo, Joan (2015). "Bonetta [married name Davies], (Ina) Sarah Forbes [Sally] (C. 1843–1880), Queen Victoria's ward". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/75453. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) The Schoens’ daughter Annie, who taught her French and English, later recalled that Sarah ‘was very bright and clever, fond of study, and had a great talent for music’. According to Annie: Her daughter Victoria was given an annuity by the Queen and she continued to visit the royal household throughout her life. In his journal Captain Forbes gave an account of his mission with relation to Miss Bonetta. James Pinson Labulo Davies was born to James and Charlotte Davies in the village of Bathurst, Sierra Leone, then a British colony. His parents were Creoles of recaptive Yoruba ancestry liberated by the British West Africa Squadron from the Atlantic Slave Trade, and whose origins were in Abeokuta and Ogbomoso respectively. [1]

It is usual to reserve the best born for the high behest of royalty and the immolation on the tombs of the diseased nobility. For one of these ends she had been detained at court for two years: proving, by her not having been sold to slave dealer, that she was of a good family. Smith, Robert (1 January 1979). The Lagos Consulate 1851–1861. Macmillan. p.27. ISBN 9780520037465. At the meeting, some slaves were about to be executed for religious rituals. One of them was Aina, a seven-year-old girl whose parents had been killed, a year before in 1848, by Ghezo’s army when they invaded their village, Oke-Odan in Egbado and took her as a slave. Forbes did everything in his power to persuade Ghezo to release the little girl to him. But the adamant king refused. Jordan, Nicola (16 October 2016). "Queen Victoria adopted my great-great grandma". Kent Online. Archived from the original on 29 May 2018 . Retrieved 6 October 2020. More recently, Bristol Museums have announced that a series of photographs by the artist Heather Agyepong – inspired by the life of Sarah Forbes Bonetta – will go on display.Victoria Randle continued to enjoy such a close relationship with Queen Victoria that she took her children Beatrice and John to England to visit her godmother the Queen in 1900. In a continuation of tradition,Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Beatrice,then became her own daughter’s godmother. Sara Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis on 15 August 1880 [2] in the city of Funchal, the capital of Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean. In her memory, her husband erected an over-eight-foot granite obelisk-shaped monument at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm. [19] The inscription on the obelisk reads: [2]