Ignatius Sancho, from The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, An African (1782)

Ignatius Sancho (c.1729–80) was born on a slave ship on the middle passage from Africa to the Americas. He was baptised in the Spanish colonies in the North of South America, and, aged two, was taken to England and given as a present to three sisters in Greenwich. Eventually he was taken under the wing of the Dowager Duchess of Montagu and made valet to the Duke, her son, who would help him set up a grocery store in Westminster with his wife, Anne (another ex-slave). Sancho was also a musician, the first Afro-Briton to have his correspondence published, as well as the first art critic, and the only Afro-British voter in the eighteenth century. His correspondence was edited and published by Francis Crewe, one of Sancho’s correspondents, in 1782.