Sarah Forbes Bonetta (1843-80)

Glass plate negative of a three-quarter length portrait of Sarah [Sally] Forbes Bonetta (1843-80) seated, facing the camera front on. She poses with her hands held together in her lap. She wears a small hair covering, dark colour dress with lace collar and sleeves and a bracelet. On the left of the photograph is a table covered in a textile. A bowl holding a textile is placed on the table.

The glass plate negative has been photographed showing the coated side and therefore the image appears laterally reversed. Prints from this negative exist in the Collection (e.g. RCINs 2800762 and 2906613)

Born in west Africa of Yoruba descent, Sarah Forbes Bonetta was captured in 1848, at the age of five, during the Okeadon War. While her family were killed in the war, as the daughter of an African chief, Sarah was kept in captivity as a state prisoner, either to be presented to an important visitor, or to be sacrificed at the death of a minister or official to become his attendant in the next world. In June 1850 Captain Frederick E. Forbes, on board the HMS Bonetta, arrived in Dahomey (present-day southern Benin) on a mission to negotiate the suppression of the slave trade. While there, he asked King Gezo for the little girl as a present, whether for himself or on behalf of Queen Victoria is not clear. The request was granted, and the child was brought to England and given the name Sarah Forbes Bonetta by the Captain, after himself and the ship. In a later marriage document, her first name was recorded as Ina, which may be a variation of Aina, her birth name.

On 9 November 1850, she was taken to Windsor Castle and received by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The Queen paid for Sarah (who she called Sally) to be educated and saw her several times in the space of a few years.

In 1862, Sarah married James Pinson Labulo Davies, a west African merchant, and they settled in Freetown, Sierra Leone. They later had four children including Victoria, to whom the Queen acted as godmother. After Sarah’s death from tuberculosis in 1880, Queen Victoria paid for Victoria Davies to attend Cheltenham College and provided her with an annuity.