Sara Forbes Bonetta

Lithograph of Forbes Bonetta, after a drawing by Frederick E. Forbes, from his 1851 book Dahomey and the Dahomans; being the journals of two missions to the king of Dahomey, and residence at his capital, in the year 1849 and 1850

Originally named Omoba Aina, she was born in 1843 in Oke-Odan, an Egbado village.[2] In 1848, Oke-Odan was invaded and captured by the Dahomeyan army. Aina's parents died during the attack and other residents were either killed or sold into the Atlantic slave trade.

Aina ended up in the court of King Ghezo as a slave at the age of five. However, two years later, Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy arrived at the Kingdom of Dahomey on a British diplomatic mission to negotiate an end to Dahomey's participation in the Atlantic slave trade.[3]

King Ghezo refused to end Dahomey's slave trade and instead offered Aina as a "gift".[4] Out of moral concern for Aina's likely and deadly fate of being executed in a traditional Dahomeyan human sacrifice ceremony, Captain Forbes accepted her on behalf of Queen Victoria and returned to Britain, with plans for the British government to be responsible for her care.[5]

Captain Forbes renamed her Sara Forbes Bonetta, after his ship HMS Bonetta. In 1850, she met the queen, who was impressed by the young princess's exceptional intelligence, and had the girl, whom she called Sally,[6] raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.[6][7][8] In 1851, Sara developed a chronic cough, which was attributed to the climate of Great Britain. Her guardians sent her to school in Africa in May of that year, when she was aged eight.[6] She attended the Annie Walsh Memorial School (AWMS) in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The school was founded by the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in January 1849 as an institution for young women and girls who were relatives of the boys in the Sierra Leone Grammar School founded in 1845 (at first named CMS Grammar School). In the school register, her name appears only as Sally Bonetta, pupil number 24, June 1851, who got married to Captain Davies in England in 1862 and was the ward of Queen Victoria. She returned to England in 1855, when she was 12. She was entrusted to the care of Rev Frederick Scheon and his wife, who lived at Palm Cottage, Canterbury Street Gillingham. The house survives.[9] In January 1862, she was invited to and attended the wedding of Queen Victoria's daughter Princess Alice.[10]

A portrait of James Pinson Labulo Davies and Sara Forbes Bonetta, photographed in London in 1862 by Camille Silvy

She was later given permission by the Queen to marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton, East Sussex, in August 1862, after a period that was to be spent in the town in preparation for the wedding. During her subsequent time in Brighton, she lived at 17 Clifton Hill in the Montpelier area.[11]

Captain Davies was a Yoruba businessman of considerable wealth, and after their wedding the couple moved back to their native Africa, where they had three children: Victoria Davies (1863), Arthur Davies (1871), and Stella Davies (1873).[12] Sara Forbes Bonetta continued to enjoy a close relationship with Queen Victoria to the point such that she and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther were the only Lagos indigènes the Royal Navy had standing orders to evacuate in the event of an uprising in Lagos. Victoria Matilda Davies, first daughter of Bonetta, was named after and also goddaughter of Queen Victoria.[13] She married the successful Lagos doctor Dr. John Randle, and was therefore also the stepmother of his son, Nigerian businessman and socialite J. K. Randle.[14] Stella Davies, the second daughter of Bonetta, and Herbert Macaulay, the grandson of Samuel Ajayi Crowther, had a daughter together - Sarah Abigail Idowu Macaulay Adadevoh (named after her maternal grandmother Sara and her paternal grandmother Abigail).[12] A descendant of Sara's through her line was the Ebola heroine Ameyo Adadevoh. Many of Sara's other descendants now live in either England or Sierra Leone, while a separate branch, the Randle family of Lagos, remains prominent in contemporary Nigeria.[13][15][16]

Sara Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis on 15 August 1880[1] in the city of Funchal, the capital of Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean.

Her husband, Captain Davies, erected a granite obelisk-shaped monument more than eight feet high in memory of Sara Forbes Bonetta at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm.[17] The inscription on the obelisk reads:[1]

IN MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA

WIFE OF THE HON J.P.L. DAVIES WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT MADEIRA AUGUST 15TH 1880

AGED 37 YEARS

Her grave is number 206 in the British Cemetery of Funchal near the Anglican Holy Trinity Church, Rua Quebra Costas Funchal, Madeira.[18]

A plaque commemorating Forbes Bonetta was placed on Palm Cottage in 2016, as part of the television series Black and British: A Forgotten History.[19]

A newly-commissioned portrait of Forbes Bonetta by artist Hannah Uzor went on display at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight in October 2020 as part of an effort by English Heritage to recognise black history in England.[20][21]

Forbes Bonetta was portrayed by Zaris-Angel Hator in the 2017 British ITV television series Victoria.[22]

• 
  Sara Forbes Bonetta by Camille Silvy
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  The English Cemetery in Funchal, Madeira
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  Sarah Forbes Bonettas gravestone, Madeira

• Walter Dean Myers (1999). At Her Majesty's Request: An African Princess in Victorian England. Scholastic Press. ISBN 978-0590486699.

• Kemi Morgan and Christine Bullock, eds, The making of Good Wives, Good Mothers, Leading Lights of Society. The Story of St Anne's School Ibadan. Y Books & Associated Bookmakers of Nigeria Ltd, 1989. ISBN 9783453246
• Oyinkan Ade-Ajayi, Heritage Schools Nigeria. Phoenix Visions World Limited, 2020. ISBN 1916032826

The two books state that she was the Acting Principal of CMS Female Institution in 1870, the school was founded in 1869 ,the first principal was Mrs Annie Roper wife of Reverend Roper of CMS Mission Ijaiye, Mrs Forbes Davies was succeeded by Rev & Mrs Henry Townsend

Look up indigène in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• "In focus: Sarah Forbes Bonetta". Kamal Simpson talks to Clare Gittings about Sarah Forbes Bonetta, who was photographed by Camille Silvy and featured in the National Portrait Gallery, London. YouTube.
• The Lost Child (BBC documentary)