Freedom Seekers: Escaping from Slavery in Restoration London

In the spring of 1999, my primary school class stood huddled in a closet-like space in the Museum of London. Before us, Stuart London spread out in miniature from the wharves of the river to St. Paul's, protected by plexiglass. Gently shushed by our teacher, Ms. Rosas, as the lights dimmed and ominous bells chimed, a male voice began a tale of baker's ovens and Pudding Lane. Positioned above the City by the diorama, we watched as grayed cotton wool was underlit and turned orange and red, representing the spread of the Great Fire of London as flames crackled over the speakers. This was the Restoration London taught to twenty-five South London eight-year-olds in the 1990s; it was a place of plague, of fire, of a jolly fire-fighting king and a curly-haired diarist scurrying to bury his parmesan cheeses.Another London existed in alleys, lanes, and well-to-do properties and is represented in Newman's book by a young man who had been given the name Ben. Just over three centuries before we stood before that diorama, Ben left the household of Theodore Johnson on Pancras Lane, a ten-minute walk from the original Museum of London site. Clutching a packet of Johnson's papers as his cover, Ben hurried through the streets along Cheapside, past a glimpse of London Bridge, and onto the Tower of London, where, in the east beyond, he sought his freedom. Ben was one of the “freedom seekers” from enslavement in Restoration London whose lives are the subject of this sensitive and timely project. Newman's work contributes to a rich and expanding historiographical corpus, stretching back decades, that has sought to highlight the Black, Asian, and Indigenous American presence in early modern London and to extend the contact zones of colonialism and enslavement back to the metropole.Beginning with advertisements placed in London newspapers seeking to recapture enslaved people like Ben, Newman offers glimpses of difficult lives and resistance to recapture, posted between calls for the return of lost bags and spaniels, leaving the author as well as the reader wanting to know more. Yet, as Newman asks, can we ever truly get to the feelings, traumas, and homesickness of these freedom seekers? Can we ever, faced with such fragmentary evidence, build a true picture of the community and experiences of the enslaved, bound, and free men and women of Asian and African descent who inhabited Restoration London? This study, which has already inspired creative community responses, calls on us to keep digging, sorting, and writing, for there are more Bens, Sarahs, and Besses waiting to enter our understanding of early modern London and be granted the dignity they deserved in life.