William Sancho and the Recovery of a Black Georgian Life in the Archive

Speakers: Oliver Ayers, Professor of History and Higher Education, and Liberty Collard, PhD Research in History, Northeastern University, London.

Hidden in the account books of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) is a name: William Sancho. He was a bookbinder, librarian, and trusted agent for one of Scotland's most powerful aristocratic families. But how did the records of a Black man born in Georgian London end up in an Edinburgh archive, and what can those records tell us about his life?

William was the son of Ignatius Sancho, a formerly enslaved man who became a celebrated writer and composer. Yet William's own story has never properly been told until now. In this talk, Oliver Ayers and Liberty Collard draw on their newly published book, 'William Sancho and the Possibilities of Black British Lives in Late Georgian Britain' to show how William forged a multifaceted career that saw the younger Sancho undertake an apprenticeship and become a bookseller, rate-paying citizen and well-connected man about town. Sancho also contributed to the early vaccination movement and the campaign against slavery. Using archival materials held at the NRS as their starting point, Ayers and Collard will bring William's world to life, a life that was deeply woven into the fabric of British society.