Presenting John Shropshire: centring the margins of history

In 2023 research for our 'Unforgotten Lives' exhibition tentatively identified John Shropshire as the hitherto unnamed Black servant of painter Sir Joshua Reynolds. The evidence was persuasive but the final piece of the jigsaw explicitly linking John to the Reynolds household always eluded us... until now. Inspired by our 'Londoners on Trial' exhibition this article by Howard Doble explores the case, discusses the challenges of researching court records and brings our findings up to date.

Sir Joshua Reynolds, the portrait painter and founder of The Royal Academy, employed a Black servant at his house at 47 Leicester Square (then called Leicester Fields) in the 1760s. This was not uncommon in London’s elite households. For instance, Reynolds’ close friend Dr Samuel Johnson employed the Jamaican born Francis Barber and Ottobah Cugoano worked for Richard Cosway, artist and fellow Royal Academician in 1780s.

Reynolds' servant

We know a great deal about the lives of Barber and Cugoano but Reynolds’ servant remains much more of a mystery. We first learn about him from James Northcote a fellow artist who published the first biography of Reynolds in 1813. Northcote gives us a few fragments of his life. He says that he came to England from Antigua sometime after 1743, having been formerly enslaved there by Colonel Valentine Morris and was employed by Reynolds for many years as his footman. Tantalisingly, he also states that he appears in several of Reynolds’ paintings, specifically the portrait of the Marquis of Granby where he holds the horse.

But Northcote fails to tell us this servant’s name. Perhaps he did not know it; perhaps he did not consider it important enough to include, but by this omission Northcote consigns him to the very margins of history. The 'Unforgotten Lives' curatorial team at TLA took up the challenge of exploring further in 2023.

The prospect of putting a name to a face some 200 years later might seem unlikely were it not for the fact that Northcote provides a major clue. Recalling an anecdote about this servant from the late 1760s he writes:

Sir Joshua, as is his usual custom, looked over the daily morning paper at his breakfast time; and on one of those perusals, while reading an account of the Old Bailey Sessions, to his great astonishment, saw that a prisoner had been tried and condemned to death for a robbery committed on the person of one of his servants…

According to Northcote, Reynolds immediately summoned his servant to demand an explanation. The story emerged that Reynolds had hosted a dinner party at his house and at the end of the night, Reynolds’ servant had been told to accompany one of the guests, Mrs Anna Williams, back to her lodgings in Bolt Court, off Fleet Street in a Hackney carriage. Having dropped the lady off, the servant bumped into some acquaintances on the way home and by the time he arrived back, he found the Reynolds house locked up for the night. Forced to find shelter in a watch-house, he fell asleep there and was robbed.

Records of the Old Bailey

The records of trials heard at the Old Bailey in the 1700s for cases in London, Middlesex and Westminster are held at The London Archives. Luckily for researchers, they have been made more accessible by the fact that the contemporary journalistic transcripts of these court cases, known as the Proceedings of the Old Bailey, have been digitised and are fully searchable online.

Searching trials for possible matches in the 1760s, one case stood out. That of John Shropshire who comes to the court on 21 October 1767 to prosecute one Thomas Windsor, accused of robbing him.

John begins his witness statement:

I was sent to see a lady home to Fleet-street, with a hackney coachman. When we had set the lady down, the coachman and I had a pot of beer; it was rather too late to go home; I went to a night-cellar, and when I was sleeping there… I found my pocket was cut, and two shillings taken out of it.

Thomas Windsor

The defendant in the case is Thomas Windsor. Both he and Shropshire are racialised in the court records as Black (though in several newspaper reports Windsor is described as East Indian). Windsor tells us that he is a servant with Esquire Spooner of Cavendish Square. This is possibly Charles Spooner of Harley Street, an enslaver with links to Jamaica, Antigua and St Kitts. Sadly, John Shropshire makes no mention of his employer in the trial report. Nor is this information included in the indictment on the Old Bailey Sessions Roll (reference: OB/SR/095) or the trial’s entry in the Old Bailey sessions book (reference: OB/SB/006).

Not all the facts match Northcote’s account. The trial evidence makes clear that John Shropshire had been “drinking all night, before he came into our company; he was very merry, and in liquor”; and the crime occurs in a late-night drinking den called the Red Lion in Piccadilly and not a watch-house.

Northcote makes no mention of either fact, but perhaps this is not surprising. Northcote was not present when the story unfolded in the Reynolds household. He is retelling a story second hand (after a period of some 40 years it may be said). His source is presumably Reynolds himself (Northcote became one of Reynolds’ pupils in 1771) and Reynolds might never have known the full version of events. He had only the newspaper report and his servant’s version to go on.

We have identified three newspaper reports of the case. The details as published were minimal and there is no mention of the fact that Shropshire was drunk in any of them. That Reynolds’ servant might have downplayed his drinking to his employer is likely, given the fear of being reprimanded.

Thomas Windsor is found guilty and sentenced to death, but we subsequently find that the sentence is respited on 18 November 1767 and eventually commuted to transportation for a period of seven years on 18 July 1768 (reference: CLA/047/LJ/19/006). He is listed on a transportation bond dated 24 September 1768 (reference: MJ/SP/T/02/116) and was transported to Virginia on the ship Justicia in October 1768. What happened to him thereafter is unknown.

Northcote’s version concurs with this. In fact, he goes further, explaining that Reynolds is so outraged that a man has been sentenced to death due to the actions of his servant, he petitions the court for the sentence to be commuted via his friend Edmund Burke who, as an MP, could instigate the pardoning process. Interestingly, Joshua Reynolds’ pocketbook for 1767 held in The Royal Academy Archives records that a Mrs Burk [sic] was one of his sitters on 24 October 1767. This is probably Jane Mary Burke, Edmund’s wife. Is it beyond the realms of possibility that Edmund accompanied his wife on that occasion and Reynolds shared his discovery with his friend?

Northcote also records that Reynolds insists that his servant take food from his own table to the prisoner every day until he is shipped to North America (an unnecessarily humiliating act for this servant who was, after all, the victim of the crime). Why he did this is unknown, but Northcote frames it as a supreme act of charity and humanity. A more intriguing possibility is that Reynolds perhaps knew Esquire Spooner and was embarrassed at the turn of events. There is an entry in Reynolds’ pocketbook for June 1769 which appears to read Mr Spooner, but we will probably never know if they were acquainted.

Georgian London

Such was the evidence for John as submitted back in 2023. Our claims were tentative but even without the connection to Reynolds, we were able to take a great deal from this court case. At its most basic, it was an insight into London night life and specifically the lives of servants. A salutary reminder of the perils of late-night drinking in Georgian London!

More generally, the case showed the potential of sessions records to throw light on London life. The huge range of business undertaken by these courts and the fact that people of all backgrounds passed through them (as defendants, witnesses, petitioners and prosecutors) means that they so often highlight the lives of everyday Londoners in a way other records cannot, giving voice to those at the margins of society. Although the Proceedings of the Old Bailey are journalistic accounts of the trials, their question-and-answer format provides a tantalising chance to hear eighteenth century Londoners ‘speak’.

That both defendant and prosecutor in this case are people of colour is also clear evidence of presence in Georgian London. A scan of the other cases heard at the Old Bailey that very same day also reveals a case involving an ‘East Indian’ man accused of stealing from the East India Company. As a snapshot of everyday London life, it provides clear evidence of the historic diversity of London’s populations which is hard to ignore.

Our research for the exhibition was time limited (and John’s story just one of the 50 or so lives presented in 'Unforgotten Lives'), but the prospect of finding out more has occupied spare moments ever since. Periodically, I have returned to the research in the hope of adding fragments to the story.

The court records at TLA always seemed the likeliest source for finding more information but, having already identified Thomas Windsor’s indictment on the Old Bailey sessions roll and the entry for the trial in the sessions book, there seemed little more to find. The most promising collection of records for cases are the series of sessions papers held for each court. These are the documents submitted to the court which have been separated from the court rolls. They can include witness statements and signed depositions, but survival rates are patchy and unsurprisingly none survive for the Shropshire/Windsor case in the series of Old Bailey Sessions Papers for October 1767 (reference: OB/SP/1767/10).

Sessions rolls

The one document I had hoped to find was the recognizance for John to appear at court to prosecute the case. This document would most likely include an address for him. In the eighteenth-century court prosecutions were private. They required the victim to bring the case to court and recognizances were the means by which individuals agreed to appear on pain of being fined. Northcote mentions that John was bound to appear at the Old Bailey and suggests that he was reluctant to do so for fear of angering his master (which it turns out was a valid anxiety). But this document was not enrolled on the Old Bailey sessions roll with the indictment as I expected might be the case.

The roll had been checked more than once without success. Sessions rolls are notoriously difficult to search and there is always the possibility of missing things, so revisiting this source again seemed worthwhile. Having seen the indictment on previous checks I gave it scant attention, but on this occasion, I looked more closely at the documents attached to it. They were mostly other bills of indictment for other cases, but one document piqued my interest. Although it did not mention any specific cases, it referred to a hearing of the Westminster Sessions court held at the Guildhall in Westminster on 9 October 1767. The fact that it was pinned to Thomas Windsor’s Old Bailey indictment and a number of other similar bills gave me cause to wonder.

Tracing the steps of the court process, I realised I had made a false assumption. The crime took place in the Red Lion pub in Westminster on 4 October 1767. Thomas Windsor was arrested and committed to prison by a local justice of the peace there to await trial. The local prison would have been Tothill Fields Bridwell (also known as the Westminster House of Correction) and I had identified the record of Windsor’s committal on 5 October 1767 in my original research (reference: WJ/CC/R/030).

Newgate Prison

From there I had assumed that Thomas would have been transferred to Newgate Prison before being ‘delivered’ to the Old Bailey for trial on 21 October 1767. But I had missed out an important stage in the process. The case was heard first at Westminster so that the Grand Jury could decide if the indictment was a true bill and warranted trial at a higher court. The fact that the case had made it to the Old Bailey had shifted my focus directly to that court, but could information be found on the Westminster court roll?

Unravelling the Sessions Roll for the Court of Westminster for October 1767 (reference: MJ/SR/3195) I encountered hundreds of recognizances and bills of indictment. Made of parchment and tightly bundled, they were mostly loose due to a broken string binding them to the roll. They spilled out onto the table. Apparently in no discernible chronological order, I began to leaf through each membrane. After 30 minutes or so I had gone through all of them but without success. Disappointed I began to put the membranes back together in the hope of closing the roll, tying it up and placing it back in the box (no mean feat as scholars of these records will know!)

Corralling the membranes together, I noticed a rogue bundle of documents which had been pushed to one side. It consisted of three membranes attached together by a clip. Assuming I had already seen them, I gave them a cursory look. To my astonishment, the name ‘John Shropshire’ jumped out from the last membrane, clear and beautifully written. What followed stopped me in my tracks:

servant to Mr Joshua Reynolds of Leicester Fields, painter

The wonders of archives

Alone in the strongroom, I stood there looking in disbelief (I may have uttered a few expletives). It was a moment which affirmed the wonders of archives and the fact that you never quite know what you’re going to find!

The recognizance of John Shropshire shows the power of archives to evidence histories long since neglected. From this one document John emerges from the margins of history momentarily to take centre stage in the story of Joshua Reynolds. The extent to which we give him this prominence is of course up to us because we choose which aspects of history we focus on. Yet, documented in the official archive, John’s place in London’s history is forever preserved.

There are of course still many questions unanswered. We know little about John’s life beyond the court case. I have identified a baptism for a John Shropshire recorded in the parish registers for St Margarets Westminster on 28 January 1761. The entry states that John is 19 years old and crucially, the parish clerk records his place of birth as Guinea. When we consider that the name is surprisingly uncommon for entries in London parish registers for the period, it suggests a possible match, but we cannot be certain.

Intriguingly, Frances Sancho, daughter of Ignatius and Ann Sancho, is baptised a few days before at the same church on 25 January 1761, which begs the question: did the Sanchos know this John Shropshire? And, given Sancho’s status as a man of letters, did he know Joshua Reynolds?

That this John was born in West Africa is entirely consistent with Northcote telling us that John Shropshire had been enslaved in Antigua. It’s important to note that the use of the term Guinea is not necessarily specific at this period and its use might simply denote African heritage, rather than a specific place of birth.

Less consistent is Northcote’s explanation as to how and when John might have come to England. In the updated 1819 edition of his biography of Reynolds, Northcote explains that John accompanied Colonel Valentine Morris’s widow, son and daughters back to England after the Colonel’s death in 1743. But the Morris family (including Colonel Morris) were all in England by 1743 and Morris snr is buried in the London parish of St Martins in the Fields.

It is likely that Northcote is mixing up father and son when referring to Valentine Morris. The information is provided in a discussion of Miss Elizabeth Morris, the actress who Reynolds painted and who died in 1769. Northcote mistakenly describes Elizabeth as the daughter of Colonel Valentine Morris snr when she was in fact the daughter of his son Valentine Morris II and Mary Mordaunt. More plausible therefore is the idea that John Shropshire was brought to England by Valentine Morris II, possibly 10 years later, following a visit he made to Antigua in 1754 where he had inherited substantial plantations from his father.

The Reynolds household

There are other discrepancies and questions which remain unanswered. When, for example, did John enter the Reynolds household as his servant? Did he serve the Morris household before changing employers (perhaps at their country estate of Piercefield in Chepstow) and what was the nature of Reynolds’ connection to the Morris family?

We must assume John became a member of Reynolds’ household through contact with the Morris family. A Mr Morris, Mrs Morris and Miss Morris all appear regularly in entries in Reynolds’ pocketbooks for 1766 and 1767, but there are entries for the family in earlier pocketbooks for 1757 and 1758 too. There is an intriguing note by Reynolds in his pocketbook on 26 June 1765: “Gave warning to the coachman”. It’s pure conjecture, but could Reynolds have hired John as a replacement for an errant servant sometime thereafter?

The question of when John came to work for Reynolds (or at least when he might have met him) is important. If our John Shropshire and the 19-year-old John baptised in 1761 are one and the same, that would make him 12 years old in 1754 when he supposedly arrived in England and a man in his 20s when Reynolds painted the Granby portrait in the mid-1760s. But the youth portrayed in this picture which Northcote states is John Shropshire is seemingly not that old.

Does this suggest that John sat for Joshua Reynolds as a child in the 1750s and that Reynolds simply used this earlier image of John in the later portrait? If so, would that mean that John was with Reynolds in 1750s or did Reynolds simply meet him then when the Morris family visited and ask to draw him? There is an unnamed Black sitter recorded in Reynolds’ pocketbook in December 1761, but the date is perhaps too late to be of significance in this respect.

Or are we to doubt Northcote’s claim about the painting altogether? The marginal way John is portrayed in the portrait has led art scholars to question whether we are in fact looking at any true likeness at all. Sadly, we may never know.

Likewise we know nothing of what happened to John after 1767. I have not yet found reference to his burial in parish registers, nor a likely marriage. Did he remain in the Reynolds household until the painter died in 1792? Did he leave London or indeed England? Perhaps one day this information will be discovered.

A final mystery

There is a final mystery to the story. The beautiful portrait said to be of Francis Barber held in the Menil collection in Houston, Texas, is thought by some scholars to be a portrait of Reynolds’ servant and not Barber. The suggestion comes from the fact that when it was exhibited at the British Institution's Pall Mall Picture Galleries in 1813, the painting was titled ‘The Black Servant of Sir Joshua’ by its owner Sir George Beaumont (who knew Reynolds well).

That the identity of the sitter was never formally recorded (and the portrait never finished) perhaps tells us that Reynolds thought the identity of its subject unimportant and that to him it was a generic painting of a man rather than the portrait of an acquaintance. The current title given to this picture indicates this ambiguity: ‘Portrait of a man, probably Francis Barber’.

Yet its attribution to Francis Barber seems less the result of evidence-based scholarship and possibly more to do with that fact that Francis is the only named Black person in Reynolds’ circle. The emergence of John begs the question: should its title now be ‘Portrait of a man, possibly Francis Barber or John Shropshire’? We can only speculate and imagine; but sometimes history requires imagination.