The world of fairground entertainers in Britain has a decent historical centre in the National Fairground Archive in Sheffield University. Black people can be traced in fairs – which include the centuries old Hull Fair and tiny events in market towns where a couple of booths, some displays, and a handful of stalls offering goods attracted attention. The career of “Lord” George Sanger (1825-1911) is described in his Seventy Years a Showman of 1910, which started with him displaying small animals and ended with a circus (he was murdered by a disgruntled employee). He mentions exhibiting the children of a black man and his white partner as pygmies, and ethnic exhibitions or human zoos were often part of these fairground sideshows. The argot or jargon of fairgrounds included “kie” as a general term for wild man shows, and we have a brief description of one such group, in Wigan around 1930.
Philip Allingham’s Cheap Jack of 1934 (page 215) describes a group of black people, employed by showman Alfie Holmsworth, “dressed in loin-clothes and straw skirts, danced on the platform in front of the show, hitting tom-toms and making wild catcalls. One of them pretended to gnaw a huge mutton bone, and human skulls were arranged about the platform to heighten the illusion”. Attracted by these antics, the crowd would pay sixpence and enter the tent show, where the alleged savages would dance on broken glass. The illusion was broken when, after loud gibberish, one accidently cut his foot and yelled at Holmsworth in English. Some of them had appeared on the streets of Wigan, performing for coins and so reducing the mystery of the later sideshow.
The thirteen Zulus who were in London in 1852 were commented on by Charles Dickens (see Bernth Lindfors, Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, Indiana University Press, 1999, chapter two – and this website page 280). An earlier but smaller group has been reported on this website’s page 087, appearing in Worcester having first been on show in Leicester in 1850 and later working at Manchester’s Knott Mill Fair in 1852. An African living rough in Sheffield in 1859 was at first thought to be a Zulu (page 115), and a chap who had worked as a Zulu chief in Chesterfield was reported in the British press in 1879 (page 115). The reputable Royal Aquarium close by London’s Westminster Abbey had a group of Zulus in 1880 (page 115).
The six Africans from the rain forests of the Congo were in Britain (and Germany) from 1905 to 1907, and are detailed on page 207.
No doubt the majority of wild man shows presented black people. Secondly, the fairs and travelling showmen employed boxers or pugilists, and photographs of fairgrounds sometimes show gloved black men, posed with colleagues, prepared to take on ambitious members of the crowd. They are often nameless, although descendants have supplied details. Along with steady employment as lion tamers (mentioned in several website pages including 084), kie groups, human zoos and boxers are a small overlooked aspect of the history of black people in Britain.
