October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Pablo Fanque was born William Darby in 1810 in Norwich. He was a British equestrian performer and circus proprietor, the first recorded circus owner of colour in Britain. His circus was popular in Victorian Britain for 30 years.
Church records suggest Pablo Fanque was born in Norwich in 1810 and was one of at least five children. When Fanque married in 1848, he said on his marriage certificate that his late father’s occupation was ‘butler’.
There has been speculation that his father was Indian-born and had been brought to Norwich and trained as a servant. Fanque was reportedly orphaned at a young age. Another account says he was born in a workhouse to a family with seven children.
Fanque’s gravestone claims that he was born in 1871, but his age was recorded in the 1841, 1851 and 1871 censuses of England as indicating he was born in 1810. A birth register at St. Andrew’s Workhouse in Norwich reports the birth of a William Darby to John Darby and Mary Stamp at the workhouse on 1 April 1810.
William Darby was apprenticed at age 11 to circus proprietor William Batty and made his first known appearance in a sawdust ring in Norwich on 26 December 1821, as ‘Young Darby’. His acts included equestrian stunts and rope walking, and he was described in one account as ‘a negro rope-dancer’. Once established as a young adult, William Darby changed his professional name to Pablo Fanque.
Fanque made a highly successful London debut in 1847. In the 30 years that Fanque operated his own circus he toured England, Scotland, and Ireland, but performed mostly in the Midlands and the North of England. His children also joined his circus.
In the 1960s John Lennon composed The Beatles’ Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!, borrowed from an 1843 playbill for Pablo Fanque’s Circus Royal. Lennon had bought the poster from an antique shop, and the title is taken from it. The Mr. Kite referenced in the poster was William Kite, who is believed to have performed in Fanque’s circus from 1843 to 1845.
Fanque married Susannah Marlaw, the daughter of a Birmingham buttonmaker. They had two sons, one of whom was named Lionel. In 1848 Susannah died in Leeds at an accident in the building where the circus was performing. Their son was performing a tightrope act when the gallery collapsed, but Susannah was the only fatality.
In June 1848, Fanque married Elizabeth Corker, a circus rider and daughter of George Corker of Bradford. Fanque and his second wife had two more sons, and again both joined the circus. A daughter died aged 1 year and 4 months and is buried in the same plot as Susannah and William, as recorded on the gravestone.
The 1861 census records Fanque as living with a woman named Sarah, 25, who is described as his wife. In 1871, just before he died, census records show him living again with his wife Elizabeth and his two sons, in Stockport.
Pablo Fanque died of bronchitis at the Britannia Inn in Stockport in 1871. Fanque is buried in Woodhouse Lane Cemetery, Leeds, next to his first wife Susannah Darby.