Sara Forbes Bonetta

Originally named Aina (or Ina),^[3] she was born in 1843 in Oke-Odan, an Egbado Yoruba village in West Africa which recently became independent from the Oyo Empire (present-day southwestern Nigeria) after its collapse.^[4] The Kingdom of Dahomey was under subjugation by Oyo, and it was a historical enemy of the Yoruba people. Oyo and Dahomey began to engage in a war in 1823 after Ghezo, the new King of Dahomey, refused to pay annual tributes to Oyo. During Oyo's war with Dahomey, Oyo was weakened and destabilised by the Islamic jihads launched by the growing Sokoto Caliphate.^[5] The Oyo Empire began to disintegrate by the 1830s, fragmenting Yorubaland into various small states. Dahomey's army began to expand eastwards into Oyo's former and defenseless Egbado territory, capturing Egbado slaves in the process.^[4]

In 1848, Oke-Odan was invaded and captured by the army of Dahomey. Aina's parents died during the attack and other residents were either killed or sold into the Atlantic slave trade. Aina ended up in the court of King Ghezo of Dahomey as a young child slave. Dahomey was a major West African power that immensely profited from the Atlantic slave trade. After the British abolition of slavery, King Ghezo fought against British attempts to curtail Dahomey's exportation of slaves. Biographer and historian of Africa Martin Meredith quotes King Ghezo telling the British, "The slave trade has been the ruling principle of my people. It is the source of their glory and wealth. Their songs celebrate their victories and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery."^[6][7][8]

In July 1850, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy arrived to West Africa on a British diplomatic mission, where he unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate with King Ghezo to end Dahomey's participation in the Atlantic slave trade.^[9] As was customary, Captain Forbes and King Ghezo exchanged gifts with each other. King Ghezo offered Forbes a footstool, rich country cloth, a keg of rum, ten heads of cowry shells, and a caboceers stool.^[10]

King Ghezo made it clear that he would not stop the slave trade. He believed that palm oil had some profit but little power. Commander Forbes was frustrated and angry. The Dahomian holiday ceremonies continued concurrently with Commander Forbes's continuous discussions with King Ghezo. Forbes started to count the number of soldiers under King Ghezo. He felt that the Dahomian monarch was attempting to show his power and give the impression that his army was larger and more powerful.^[11]

Commander Forbes then heard a scream and then looked to a group of Dahomans who were waving their guns and carrying people in little baskets. Forbes was informed by an interpreter that those he saw being taken in little baskets were going to be executed. The ceremony was called the “Ek-onee-noo-ah-toh” or "watering of the graves."^[12] The people in the baskets were dressed in white garments, were to be slaughtered and their blood dripped on the graves of high ranking Dahomans. Some of the intended victims had been held in captivity for over two years for this tradition. They were being carried while their hands and feet were tied together. As the victims were dragged through the ranks, the Dahomans poked and jabbed them with knives and spears.^[11]

Commander Forbes watched in horror as a man from the basket tipped over to a pit and the man viciously fell down. As he hit the ground, he was instantly attacked and his head cut off. Forbes tried but failed to make King Ghezo stop the ritual. Forbes then offered him money. The King eventually allowed him to bargain for some of the victims. However, King Gezo's interpreters clarified that the custom of watering the ancestors' graves was an ancient one and could not be discontinued without dishonouring the Dahomey people.^[11]

He had never witnessed a ritual this vicious and violent. He was certain that this was the worst moment he had ever encountered in all the years fighting the slave trade. He then noticed the girl, Aina. She was so tiny, so still. As they carried her closer to the pit, the drums became more intense. Forbes was appalled. He found it hard to comprehend how a king could ritually murder a child. However, Gezo found it extremely easy to sacrifice the girl. It was explained that she was an Egbado, a Dahoman enemy. Her blood on the King's ancestors' tombs would be a tribute to them.^[11]

Forbes panicked and assured King Ghezo that Queen Victoria wouldn't honor a king that would kill a child, so the king offered Aina to be a gift for Queen Victoria. Forbes estimated that Aina was enslaved by King Ghezo for two years. Although her actual ancestry is unknown,^[13] Forbes came to the conclusion that Aina was likely to have come from a high status background because of the tribal markings on her face and that she had not been sold to European slave traders.^[10] Describing Aina in his journal, he wrote: "one of the captives of this dreadful slave-hunt was this interesting girl. It is usual to reserve the best born for the high behests of royalty and the immolation on the tombs of the deceased nobility…".^[14]

Dahomey was notorious for mass executing its captives in spectacular human sacrifice rituals as part of the Annual Customs of Dahomey. Forbes was aware of Aina's potential deadly fate in Dahomey, and as he wrote in his journal, refusing Aina "would have been to have signed her death-warrant, which probably would have been carried into execution forthwith."^[14][10] Captain Forbes accepted Aina on behalf of Queen Victoria and embarked on his journey back to Britain.^[14]

Captain Forbes renamed her Sara Forbes Bonetta, after himself and his ship HMS Bonetta. Forbes initially intended to raise her himself. However, Sara was later taken to meet Queen Victoria and she told her majesty about her horrible life, that for a couple of years she was kept in a small cage next to other unfortunate prisoners who she watched from time to time be taken out and slaughtered in rituals of the King of Dahomey. Her jailers often taunted her with the truth that she was being saved for ceremonial purposes too, and when it suited him, King Gezo intended to sacrifice her as a gift to his royal ancestors' tomb.^[11]

Queen Victoria was touched by her story and she requested that Sara have her photo taken after their visit, Sara was taken to the English-based studio of American photographer John J. Mayall. Sara was afraid of the photographer because she had no idea what he intended. When she noticed a portrait of a man with a sword hanging on the wall, her fear turned into panic. She yelled, "Cut head off!" as she quickly ran her hand down her narrow throat. "Cut head off!" Sara knew from her years in captivity that swords were meant for head cuts. It was necessary to reassure the trembling girl that the man brandishing the sword was not real and would not hurt her.^[11]

Queen Victoria was impressed by the young princess's "exceptional intelligence", and had the girl, whom she called Sally,^[15] raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.^[15][16][17] 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 aged eight.^[15] She attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School (AWMS) in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The school was founded by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in January 1849 as an institution for young women and girls who were relatives of the boys in the Sierra Leone Grammar School founded in 1845 (at first named CMS Grammar School). In the school register, her name appears only as Sally Bonetta, pupil number 24, June 1851, who married Captain Davies in England in 1862 and was the ward of Queen Victoria. She returned to England in 1855, when she was 12. She was entrusted to the care of Rev. Frederick Scheon and his wife Elizabeth,^[18] who lived at Palm Cottage, Canterbury Street Gillingham. The house survives.^[19] In January 1862, she was invited to and attended the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Alice.^[20]

She was later commanded by the Queen to marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton, East Sussex, in August 1862, after a period spent in the town preparing for the wedding. During her subsequent time in Brighton, she lived at 17 Clifton Hill in the Montpelier area.^[21]

Captain Davies was a Yoruba businessman of considerable wealth, and after their wedding the couple moved back to their native Africa, where they had three children: Victoria Davies (1863), Arthur Davies (1871), and Stella Davies (1873).^[22] Sara Forbes Bonetta continued to enjoy such a close relationship with Queen Victoria 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. Victoria Matilda Davies, Bonetta's first daughter, was named after Queen Victoria, who was also her godmother.^[23] She married the successful Lagos doctor Dr. John Randle, becoming the stepmother of his son, Nigerian businessman and socialite J. K. Randle.^[24] Bonetta's second daughter Stella Davies and Herbert Macaulay, the grandson of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, had a daughter together: Sarah Abigail Idowu Macaulay Adadevoh, named after her maternal grandmother Sara and her paternal grandmother Abigail.^[22] A descendant of Sara's through her line was the Ebola heroine Ameyo Adadevoh. Many of Sara's other descendants now live in either Britain or Sierra Leone; a separate branch, the Randle family of Lagos, remains prominent in contemporary Nigeria.^[23][25][26]

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.^[27] The inscription on the obelisk reads:^[2]

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

Her grave is number 206 in the British Cemetery of Funchal near the Anglican Holy Trinity Church, Rua Quebra Costas Funchal, Madeira.^[28]

A plaque commemorating Forbes Bonetta was placed on Palm Cottage in 2016, as part of the television series Black and British: A Forgotten History.^[29]

A newly commissioned portrait of Forbes Bonetta by artist Hannah Uzor went on display at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in October 2020 as part of an effort by English Heritage to recognise black history in England.^[30][31]

Forbes Bonetta was portrayed by Zaris-Angel Hator in the 2017 British ITV television series Victoria.^[32]

Forbes Bonetta's life and story formed the basis for the novel Breaking the Maafa Chain by Anni Domingo, published by Jacaranda Books in 2021.

Forbes Bonetta’s life and story also form the basis of the novel, “The Other Princess : A Novel of Queen Victoria’s Goddaughter” by Denny S. Bryce, published by HarperCollins October 3, 2023.

•  
  Sara Forbes Bonetta photographed in 1862 by Camille Silvy
•  
  The English Cemetery in Funchal, Madeira
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  Sarah Forbes Bonetta's gravestone, Madeira

• Black British elite, the class that Forbes Bonetta belonged to
• Nigerian aristocracy, the class that Forbes Bonetta belonged to
• Nigerian bourgeoisie, the class that Forbes Bonetta married into

• Walter Dean Myers (1999). At Her Majesty's Request: An African Princess in Victorian England. Scholastic Press. ISBN 978-0590486699.

• Kemi Morgan and Christine Bullock, eds, The making of Good Wives, Good Mothers, Leading Lights of Society. The Story of St Anne's School Ibadan. Y Books & Associated Bookmakers of Nigeria Ltd, 1989. ISBN 9783453246
• Oyinkan Ade-Ajayi, Heritage Schools Nigeria. Phoenix Visions World Limited, 2020. ISBN 1916032826
• John Van der Kiste, Sarah Forbes Bonetta: Queen Victoria's African Princess. A & F, 2018. ISBN 978-1719186377 1

The books state that she was the Acting Principal of CMS Female Institution in 1870, the school was founded in 1869, the first principal was Mrs Annie Roper wife of Reverend Roper of CMS Mission Ijaiye, Mrs Forbes Davies was succeeded by Rev & Mrs Henry Townsend

• "In focus: Sarah Forbes Bonetta". Kamal Simpson talks to Clare Gittings about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, who was photographed by Camille Silvy and featured in the National Portrait Gallery, London. YouTube.
• The Lost Child (BBC documentary)