with contributions by Kathy Chater – thanks.

Noting Andrew Drayton’s trial in Nottingham in early 1886 on page 295 of this website, that just one “coloured man” was sent for trial after the election riots in Nottingham in November 1885 suggested further investigation might be interesting.

Drayton, a labourer aged 33, seems to have been a man of his times in that he had been charged with being drunk and disorderly in Exchange Row, in the centre of Nottingham, in July 1885. The Nottingham Evening Post of 8 July 1885 page 3 added that he was fined £1 or 14 days in prison.

The general election of late 1885 led to street demonstrations and riots in the city at the end of November, and a report of an enquiry into those injured by the police was printed in the Nottingham Evening Post of 30 November 1885, page 3. Over seven hundred people gathered outside the enquiry, “many with their heads bandaged”. Drayton, “a coloured man”, was held in custody on a charge of “riotous and disorderly conduct in the Great Market-place”, and he was “the leader of a gang of roughs who were throwing stones”. Drayton said he had nothing to do with the gang and had not thrown any stones. He and five others were charged with offences connected to the riot. The Nottingham Evening Post of 4 December (page 3) reported he had been accused of engaging in a riot, going about the streets at the head of a crowd of 400 or 500 people. He was refused bail and imprisoned awaiting trial.

When the Nottingham Journal (14 January 1886, page 4) published a list of the 31 cases to be heard at the assize court Drayton was the only alleged rioter. He was declared to be a labourer aged 33. He remarked “there was prejudice against him in consequence of his being a man of colour”. He was told that he was liable to a sentence of seven years penal servitude – forced and often valueless prison labour including the treadmill. He was in fact sentenced to six months, a verdict which the Nottingham Evening Post of 16 January 1886 (page 2) said was “thoroughly deserved”.

The name Andrew Drayton is rare. His name does not reappear in the Nottingham newspapers. He seems to have died in Nottingham in late 1914 when the registrar noted he was aged 67.

Kathy Chater provided an interesting lead: https://victorianelectionviolence.uk/police-brutality-race-and-racism-in-the-1885-nottingham-election/ and also the following information from British census returns: In the 1871 census Andrew Drayton is 20 and is lodging at 4 Willow Walk, St Pancras, London.  He’s 20 and a labourer, born in Charlestown, South America. [This was certainly Charleston, South Carolina.] At the 1881 census Andrew Drayton is 29 and staying at 2 South Street, in Wandsworth in London, as a ‘visitor’, with a blacksmith, who also has a couple of boarders, which suggests this was a temporary stay.  He has ‘no occupation’.

At the 1891 census he’s living at 15 Kirkstead Terrace in Radford, Nottingham, with wife Elizabeth (38, b. Longboro) and sons William (14) and Henry (10), both born Nottingham.  His age is also given as 38.  He’s a bricklayer’s labourer, she’s a frame work knitter.  William works in a chemical works and Henry is a scholar. In the 1901 census Andrew and Elizabeth were living at 6 Knights Place in Nottingham.  Andrew’s birthplace is given as South West Carolina. Although he’s Head of the Household, she is listed first and a son, William Brooks (wire worker, 25, widower), is living with them.  Looks like she was married with at least one child when they got together, so they married after the first husband died. 

I can’t find a marriage between 1870 and 1881, but in the September 1887 quarter, Andrew Drayton and Elizabeth Brookes (or Louisa Lester – on the same page but unlikely) were married in Basford, Notts. An Elizabeth Drayton died in 1906 in Nottingham: this is probably her. In the 1911 census, Andrew Drayton, labourer, single, aged 52 (sic), is living in a lodging house at 8 Foundry Yard, Nottingham. 

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