‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated’

This blogpost for Explore Your Archive week looks into the connection between a St George’s alumnus and a former Cuban slave in the 19^th century. St George’s historical connections to slavery are being reviewed as part of the Institutional Review of Race Equality. Please note that this post contains language that may upset or offend readers. This has been included where necessary as used within the original sources for illustrative purposes. This blogpost is written by St George’s Archivist Juulia Ahvensalmi.

The poet Juan Francisco Manzano (1797-1853/54) was born in enslavement on a sugar plantation in Cuba. Richard Robert Madden (1798-1888) was born in Ireland, the youngest of 21 children of a wealthy silk manufacturer, and an alumnus of St George’s.

How did the paths of these two men cross?

Title page of ‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated’, 1840.

Manzano’s parents, Sofia del Pilar Manzano and Toribio de Castro, were enslaved under Señora Beatriz de Justiz de Santa Ana. Sofia was the chief handmaid of Señora Beatriz, allegedly a relatively privileged position that meant Manzano was not allowed to play with the other slave children at the plantation, although it did not save him from various forms of mental and physical abuse. At some point, Manzano was sold to María de la Concepción, Marquesa del Prado Ameno, who by all accounts was particularly cruel and abusive.

Extract from ‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated’, 1840.

The accounts on how Manzano escaped slavery are vague and contradictory. Somehow, however, Manzano managed to buy his freedom in 1837, aged 40. Although he had had little power over his life, he had been taught to read and write in his childhood. In one version of the story, his literacy proved to be his salvation, and a group of Cuban reformists, including a plantation owner called Domingo Del Monte, were so impressed by the poetry he had been writing that they eventually bought his freedom.

Del Monte asked him to write down the narrative of his life, although it seems unlikely he was paid for the work. The book could not, however, be published in Cuba or in other Spanish colonies, even after the end of the Spanish rule in 1898 – Cuban economy depended on slave labour on the sugar plantations to such an extent that any accounts that might have a negative impact were banned. It was finally published in 1937 in Cuba, having been passed to the National Library in Havana by Del Monte’s estate.

English translation of Manzano’s poem ‘Mis treinta años’ (‘Thirty years’). Translation by Madden.

Madden, in the meanwhile, had moved to London in 1828, following several years in Italy and the Middle East. He had received £220 for accompanying a tuberculosis patient to England; this money he spent to further his medical studies at St George’s.

Advertisements for lectures at the School of Anatomy and Medicine adjoining St George’s Hospital, 1835. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

He settled down to practice medicine in London, having married Harriet Elmslie, the youngest daughter of a West India merchant and slave owner John Elmslie. In London he joined the Anti-Slavery Society, and eventually gave up the practice of medicine, becoming instead a government civil servant.

He had been educated in Dublin, Paris and London, including at St George’s where he studied at two occasions. The student registers show he enrolled first in 1823 for six months, and returned to St George’s in 1828. On both occasions, Benjamin Brodie was his tutor.

The entry for Richard Robert Madden in St George’s Medical School student register, 1828. SGHMS/4/1/16, Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

In 1833 he travelled to Jamaica to work as a special magistrate for the British Colonial Office: his role was to help resolve disputes between ‘apprentices’, as former enslaved people were known as, and the slave owners, also known as planters. His account describing his experiences was published in 1835 as ‘A Twelvemonth’s Residence in the West Indies, During the Transition from Slavery to Apprenticeship’. Allegedly he visited a plantation owned by his uncle, where he discovered ‘two mulatto cousins’ and learned that another cousin of his had been sold as a slave. In his book and in evidence given to a British parliamentary select committee he denounced the apprenticeship system.

In 1836 Madden was appointed commissioner of liberated slaves in Havana, Cuba, a Spanish colony beholden to Britain since 1814: it is likely in this role that he first met Manzano through Domingo del Monte, who occupied a powerful position as a plantation owner (and hence probably an enslaver as well) in the society.

He took it upon himself to translate Manzano’s account into English. The resulting book was published in Britain in 1840, and was called ‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated: Translated from the Spanish by R.R. Madden, with the History of the early Life of the Negro Poet Written by Himself’. Madden himself writes that the text

‘was presented to me in the year 1838 by a gentleman at Havana, a Creole […] some of these pieces had fortunately found their way to Havana, and attracted the attention of the literary people there, while the poor author was in slavery […] The gentleman to whom I have alluded […] redeemed this poor fellow from slavery […] [and] induced him to write his story’

Part of the glossary in ‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated’, 1840.

Although slavery had officially been abolished in Britain and the British colonies in 1833 by the Slavery Abolition Act (following the Slave Trade Act of 1807 prohibiting slave trade), the transitional concept of ‘apprenticeship’ however in many ways was simply a continuation of slavery. Nor did the market for sugar and other goods produced with slave labour cease, and Britain continued to trade with countries such as Cuba, where slavery was not abolished until 1886.

In 1840, Madden spoke at first  World Anti-Slavery Convention, delivering a report on Cuban slavery. He had stated as his aim in publishing Manzano’s work to ‘vindicate in some degree the character of the negro intellect, at least the attempt affords me an opportunity of recording my conviction, that the blessings of education and good government are only wanting to make the Natives of Africa, intellectually and morally, equal to any people on the surface of the globe’.

Both Del Monte and Madden appropriated Manzano’s work for their own purposes, which for Del Monte may have included using abolitionism as a means of ensuring that the numbers of black Africans in Cuba would not surpass the number of white Europeans. Madden tailored his translation to his British audience, who wanted to distance themselves from slavery: it was easier to read about atrocities committed by other nations, in an exotic location and via a translated text from another language. His edition omitted certain details, including names, places and dates, as well as instances of brutality.

By highlighting his own role in the edition (where the title does not even include Manzano’s name) Madden placed himself in the position of authority and power: as a white saviour. Moreover, in the book he first presents two of his own poems, ‘The Slave Trade Merchant’ and ‘The Sugar Estate’, turning himself into the author in the process. From the perspective of a British abolitionist, it is almost as if British slavery never existed.

Table of contents of ‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated’, 1840.

What happened to Manzano and Madden after this?

Madden went on to work for the British Colonial Office, first as a special commissioner of inquiry in the British colonies on the western coast of Africa on Gambia River and the Gold Coast (hub for slave trade since the 17^th century), and then as colonial secretary in Western Australia. He published several more books on a variety of subjects, including burial practices and the United Irishmen. In 1849 he returned to Dublin, where he spent the rest of his life as the secretary of the Loan Fund Board at the Dublin Castle: he never appears to have returned to medical practice. He died in 1886, aged 87.

We know much less of what happened to Manzano. A play written by him, Zafira, was published in 1842. He was married, twice, first to Marcelina Campos, then, in 1835, to María del Rosario, whose family, according to some sources, disapproved of the marriage due to Manzano’s status as an enslaved person and his dark skin colour. He was arrested in 1844 and jailed for about a year, along with thousands of others, suspected of involvement in a revolutionary conspiracy. He died in 1853 or 1854. Although much has been written about Manzano, these accounts tend to focus on his writing and not on his life, and details of his later life are difficult to find.

Sources and further reading:

Almeida, Joselyn. 2011. ‘Translating a Slave’s Life: Richard Robert Madden and the Post-Abolition Trafficking of Juan Manzano’s Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba’. Romantic Circles.

Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery. ‘John Elmslie senior’.

Encyclopedia.com. ‘Manzano, Juan Francisco’

Engle, Margarita. 2006. ‘Poet Slave of Cuba: A Biography of Juan Francisco Manzano’

Manzano, Juan Francisco and Madden, Richard Robert. 1840. ‘Poems by a Slave in the Island of Cuba, Recently Liberated: Translated from the Spanish by R.R. Madden, with the History of the early Life of the Negro Poet Written by Himself’.

Molloy, Sylvia. 1989. ‘From Serf to Self: The Autobiography of Juan Francisco Manzano’. MLN 104(2): 393-417.

Miller, Marilyn Grace, 2010. ‘Reading Juan Francisco Manzano in the wake of Alexander von Humboldt’. Atlantic Studies 7(2):163-189.

Moore, Raymond. 2012. Edited by Laurel Howard, Austin Arminio, W.J. Shepherd, 2018.  ‘Richard Robert Madden: An inventory of the Richard Robert Madden Papers at the Special Collections of the University Libraries at the Catholic University of America’. The Catholic University of America, Washington D.C

Murray, David R. 1972. ‘Richard Robert Madden: His Career as a Slavery Abolitionist’. Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 61(241):41-53.

Salama, Carmen. 2020. ‘Between Subject and Object: The Identity of a Slave in Juan Francisco Manzano’s Autobiography’. Journal of Global Initiatives 15 (1):6-15

The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD), San Francisco. ‘Juan Francisco Manzano’.

Wikipedia. ‘Juan Francisco Manzano’

— ‘Richard Robert Madden’

Woods, C.J. 2009. ‘Madden, Richard Robert’. Dictionary of Irish Biography.

From the archives: International students at St George’s

In this blogpost, written by Archivist Juulia Ahvensalmi, we will be looking at the international history of St George’s students.

St George’s Medical School was formally established in 1834, but the hospital, which was opened in 1733, took pupils long before that. There were also several anatomical schools closely associated with the St George’s, including John Hunter’s Great Windmill Street school (established by John’s brother William Hunter in 1745), and Samuel Lane’s School of Anatomy and Medicine adjoining St George’s Hospital; John Hunter was a surgeon at St George’s, and Lane had also studied at St George’s.

There were fees to pay, and students could study for various lengths of time. The early student records show that some students only enrolled for a three-month period, others for six or 12 months. Initially pupils were assigned to a particular surgeon or physician. To become a perpetual pupil, there was an additional fee (which in 1870 was 100 guineas), and allowed the student admission to the practice of the physicians and surgeons of the hospital and all the lectures, allowing them to compete for any prizes and to become clinical clerks and dressers. The high fees then (as now) meant that education was not available for everyone, and the majority of the students were from the upper middle classes; many had gone to public schools and Cambridge or Oxford before attending St George’s.

Student register 1805, showing students enrolled for various lengths of time under different surgeons. Register of Pupils and House Officers 1756-1837, SGHMS/4/1/16, Archives & Special Collections, St George’s, University of London; and Extract from student register, 1945, showing the schools and colleges attended by student prior to their enrolment at St George’s. Register of Pupils 1837-1946, SGHMS/4/1/18, Archives & Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

International connections

The student records held in the archives reveal a steady trickle of international students, based on their names (which in these early records is often the only information recorded). Names, of course, can only be used as a starting point, but the records also occasionally explicitly refer to visiting students, as in the case of Michal Astrashapovitch and Stephen Koniwetsky, who paid £20 to study under Everard Home and attend the lectures ‘for an uncertain time, to be settled at their leaving England’. There is no more information about them, but they may have been Russian – there are several other Russian names which suggests some regular contact or connection.

Student register 1808, showing enrolment of Michal Astrashapovitch and Stephen Koniwetsky. SGHMS/4/1/16, Archives & Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

Another early student was Philip Syng Physick, who had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and travelled to England to study under John Hunter in 1785. Known as the ‘father of American surgery’, he is said to have performed the first human blood transfusion, and was particularly interested in using autopsy as a method for observation and discovery – a practice that we can time and again see in our post mortem records.

Swedish names also appear in the registers with some regularity, especially in the 1890s when it appears to have been somewhat of a trend to travel to London to study medicine. These students include Henning Grenander, who later gained fame as a figure skater, winning the world title at the National Skating Palace in London in 1898.

Henning Grenander. Image: skateguard1.blogspot.com

Henrik Kellgren’s ‘Swedish Institution for the Cure of Diseases by Manual Treatment’in Eton Square, London appears to have further encouraged Swedish students to study in London: Axel Wolter Louis Stackelberg, who was a pupil at Kellgren’s institute, for instance, is enrolled for 6 months as a student of anatomy in 1897, while both Kellgren’s sons Ernst and Jonas also studied at St George’s for a period; Jonas went on to study rheumatism, was a pioneer in the study of physiology of pain, and became a professor of rheumatology in Manchester in 1953.

The adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan

Hajee Baba may have been the first Muslim student at St George’s, and one of the first Iranian medical practitioners to study in Europe in this period. He came to England to study medicine alongside another young Iranian, Muhammad Kazim or Mohammed Cassim, in 1811 with the British ambassador to Iran, Sir Harford Jones. Hajee Baba was the son of an officer in the Shah’s army, and the sending of students to study in Britain was seen as a way of strengthening the diplomatic ties and connections between the countries; his brother trained as a mining engineer in Russia. Kazim was to study arts, but died shortly after their arrival in England.

Hajee Baba stayed in England for eight years. Following his studies, he returned to Iran to work as a physician in the court in Teheran, and in 1835 he is described as ‘a respectable elderly looking man’. He also worked as an interpreter for Persian missions abroad. Eventually he became the chief physician to the shah. He died in 1842 or 1843.

Student register 1817, Register of Pupils and House Officers 1756-1837, SGHMS/4/1/16, Archives & Special Collections, St George’s, University of London; Cover of ‘The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan’ (1824-28) by James Justinian Morier; Poster for ‘The Adventures of Hajji Baba’ (1954), Wikipedia, ©20^th Century Studios.

He may have been the inspiration for a series of best-selling novels, ‘The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan’ (1824-28) by James Justinian Morier, secretary to Sir Harford Jones; Hajee Baba was reportedly annoyed at Morier’s use of his name for this purpose (and would have been, we can imagine, even more annoyed by the American adventure film of the same name of 1954!).  Nile Green’s book ‘The Love of Strangers: What Six Muslim Students Learned in Jane Austen’s England’ (2016) recounts the story of a group of six students who travelled to Britain in 1815, based on contemporary diaries and letters of the students, in which he also mentions Hajee Baba and his unfortunate companion.

The problem of sources…

Often, the spelling of names varies considerably in different sources (this is of course particularly true when the original is in a different script), which can make tracking people difficult (but we do enjoy a bit of detective work!); there is a Wikipedia entry for Hajee Baba, for instance, but in that his name is spelled Hadji Baba Ashfar, whilst the Encyclopaedia Iranica uses the form Ḥājjī Bābā Afšār; in Persian his name is افشار، حاجی بابا.

Many students are also entered in the registers only by their first initial and surname, making identification even more problematic. A ‘foreign-sounding’ name, moreover, is of course not solid evidence either way – the somewhat exotic-sounding Peregrine Fernandez in 1799, for instance, ‘gentleman of Widcombe, Somerset’, may have had family roots elsewhere, but was born and bred in London. Where the student records are simply lists of names, as the earlier ones are, we have to turn to other sources to find out more about the people behind the names.

Image of Assaad Y. Kayat. Source: ‘A Voice from Lebanon with the Life and Travels of Assaad Y. Kayat’ (1847).

One student we do know more about is Assaad Kayat, who enrolled as a student at St George’s in 1843, studying alongside Henry Gray (of Gray’s Anatomy). His fascinating story is recounted in more detail in an earlier blogpost, and his autobiography tells us a lot about his childhood in Beirut, as well as his and his wife’s experiences as immigrants in London.

The archives also reveal the story of Boghos Baghdasan Tahmisian, who, according to an appeal launched in 1892 by the Turkish Mission’s Aid Society, was a ‘native of Cilicia’, in present-day Turkey; his name may suggest Armenian origins. He is in the appeal described as a diligent student, who had arrived in London in 1889 and enrolled as a medical student at St George’s. He had, however, found himself lacking adequate funds to be able to finish his studies, which is why the society decided to appeal to the public on his behalf.

‘An appeal on behalf of Mr B.B. Tahmisian’ (1892) and a letter signed by Tahmisian. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

Pictorial propaganda

Following the end of the First World War, the Universities Bureau of the British Empire (now Association of Commonwealth Universities), established in 1913, encouraged British universities to admit students, and the Foreign Office was eager to distribute what they called ‘pictorial propaganda’:

‘The idea is to endeavour to impress the peoples of Russia and of the East with the greatness of the educational system of the British Empire’

Letters to the Medical School, preserved in the minute books. Minutes of the Medical School Committee XII-XIII, SGHMS/1/1/1/15. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

‘This medical school is unable to admit any Ceylonese students’

(Medical School minute books, 1920)

The minute books of the medical school from that time contain frequent references to the admission (or not, as it were) of international students; the minutes refer to students by their nationalities: ‘a Pole’, ‘the Siamese doctor’, ‘a native of India’.

At times, certain nationalities were the subject of intense conversations. Following the end of the First World War and demobilisation, many ‘American and colonial’ soldiers found themselves with some time to spare, and willing to use that time to study. A letter from the Royal Society of Medicine in 1918 warns that if plans to offer brief post-graduate courses for such students are not soon put in place, ‘the chances are that the majority of them will go to Paris, where […] post-graduate courses have been arranged for all Allied Officers and are already in full swing!’. The response from St George’s was not enthusiastic due to staff shortages and bureaucratic burden on the school. In the end, however, it was decided that up to 10 American students could be admitted for a three-month course, with a fee of ten guineas.

Appeals from the Egyptian Educational Mission received an even less favourable response: despite admitting two Egyptian students for a clinical course, ‘it was decided that this School cannot bind itself to admit any definite number of Egyptians’, the dean at this time wrote, suggesting that the school is too small to admit ‘foreign students […] although I am doubtful whether they ever really amalgamate or attempt to settle down with their fellow-students’.

At the moment we’re looking forward to delving into our nursing records and learning more about the student nurses at St George’s. Our initial research suggests that in the 1950s-1960s for instance up to 70% of the nursing students were immigrants to the UK; among these are many from the Windrush generation, and students came from all over the world, including the Caribbean, Ireland, India, Nigeria, Sweden and Bermuda.

Records of nursing students at St George’s in the 1970s. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.

Want to know more, or see and study the records for yourself? Just get in touch with us at archives@sgul.ac.uk – we’d be very happy to hear from you!

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