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.

John Edmonstone was born into slavery, probably in Demerara, British Guiana, in the late eighteenth century, but later gained his freedom. He learned taxidermy from Charles Waterton, who used to visit Charles Edmonstone at his plantation in Demerara. Waterton took John under his wing and taught him taxidermy or in his own words, ‘the proper way to stuff birds.’ The two would travel together on expeditions into the rainforest and John would learn the skills he would go on to teach Darwin.

After he was freed in 1817, Edmonstone came to Glasgow with his former master, Charles Edmonstone. From there he moved to Edinburgh, where he earned a living stuffing birds at the Natural Museum and taught taxidermy to students at the University of Edinburgh.

In 1825, Darwin came to Edinburgh to study medicine. Having changed his mind about making his future as a doctor or surgeon, Darwin took lessons from Edmonstone on bird taxidermy.

It has been suggested this this is how Darwin’s interest in naturalism began, and that it inspired him to explore the tropics. Within five years, Darwin was on the HMS Beagle as the ship’s naturalist for its famous voyage in 1831 to South America, Australia, and New Zealand.

More about John Edmonstone at https://www.history.co.uk/shows/not-what-you-thought-you-knew/articles/john-edmonstone-%25E2%2580%2593-the-man-who-taught-darwin

The following planning applications in the Sutton division have been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.

20/01211/CLE
Little Downham
Alfie Acres 1B Second Drove Little Downham
Certificate of Lawfulness for existing use as a residential dwelling.

20/01299/FUL
Witchford
87 Main Street Witchford CB6 2HQ
Single storey rear extension.

20/01193/FUL
Witcham
Hillcrest Mepal Road Witcham
Two dwellings (phased development Plot 1 & 2).

20/01204/FUL
Witcham
Oneway Headleys Lane Witcham
First floor extension and garage conversion.

Further information can be found on the district council’s planning pages. If you would like to respond formally to the council about any planning application, comments should be addressed to the district council and not to me.  Comments may be made

• online using the council’s public access web page (the link above);
• by email to plservices@eastcambs.gov.uk;
• or by post to the Planning Department, The Grange, Nutholt Lane, Ely, CB7 4EE.

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.

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write and encouraged her poetry.

By the age of twelve, Phillis was reading Greek and Latin classics in their original languages, as well as difficult passages from the Bible. At the age of fourteen, she wrote her first poem, and the Wheatley family supported Phillis’s education and promoted her poetry.

On a 1773 trip to London with her master’s son, seeking publication of her work, Phillis was helped to meet prominent people who became patrons. Her book of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published in 1773. It was printed in eleven editions, and praised by luminaries such as George Washington. Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, subsidised the publication of her poems, though they did not meet. The French writer and thinker Voltaire said in a letter to a friend that Wheatley had proved that black people could write poetry.

Phillis was set free by the Wheatleys shortly after the publication of her book. However, they both died shortly afterwards, and Phillis was cast into poverty. She met and married John Peters, a free black grocer. They struggled with poor living conditions and the deaths of two babies. Peters was imprisoned for debt in 1784. Phillis had a sickly child to care for, and went to work in a boarding house, where she died in obscurity as a scullery maid at the age of 31.

More about Phillis Wheatley at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley

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.

Ira Aldridge was an American and later British stage actor and playwright who made his career after 1824 largely on the London stage and in Europe, especially in Shakespearean roles. Born in New York City, Aldridge is the only actor of African-American descent among the 33 actors of the English stage honoured with bronze plaques at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-on-Avon. He was especially popular in Prussia and Russia, and at the time of his sudden death at the age of 60 he was on tour in Poland.

Aldridge was born in 1807 in New York City, where he attended a charitable school for the children of free black people and slaves. In the early 1820s he performed onstage with the African Company, who built the first resident African-American theatre in the United States which came under protests, attacks, and parody by neighbours, competitors, and even the Sheriff of New York. 

In the face of this discrimination, Aldridge emigrated to Liverpool, where he invented a story of that he was descended from African princes, and for a time he took the name of Keene, after the popular British actor, Edmund Kean. At the age of 17, he appeared on the London stage in Othello and his career took off, though he still faced prejudice.

In 1831 Aldridge successfully performed in Dublin and around the UK, and in 1852 took on his first tour to continental Europe, including Germany, Budapest, Serbia, and Imperial Russia. He applied for British citizenship in 1863, and shortly before his death was planning to return to America to perform there.

Aldridge married an Englishwoman, Margaret Gill, in 1824, and they lived in Upper Norwood in London. In 1857 he was successfully sued by a fellow actor William Stothard, who accused him of having an affair with his wife and fathering her child. On Margaret’s death forty years later married his mistress, the self-styled Swedish countess Amanda von Brandt – they had four children, one of whom died in infancy. The remaining three went on to have musical careers.

Aldridge in August 1867 while visiting Łódź, Poland, and was buried in the Old Evangelical Cemetery there.

More about Ira Aldridge at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Aldridge

Today is the last day to complete East Cambridgeshire District Council’s online survey on the impact of COVID-19 on businesses in the district.

The purpose of the survey is to gather information about how the pandemic has affected businesses and provide an overview of the predicted long-term effects. The Council will use this data to further tailor the support and advice it provides as part of its COVID-19 recovery plan.

The survey includes questions about the financial impact of business disruption, measures taken to cope with the impact of the pandemic, and the Small Business COVID-19 Grant Funding schemes.

It will also cover how COVID-19 has affected training and apprenticeship programmes, the impact on supply chains, key concerns for the year ahead, and what additional support businesses feel they need.

If you’re a local business and haven’t completed the survey yet you can find it at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/ECDCCovidSurvey

This afternoon’s three-hour meeting began with a petition organised by Unison asking the Health Committee to step in over plans by North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust (covering Hinchingbrooke, Peterborough, and Stamford) to outsource more than seventy jobs in a range of services including cleaning, catering, linen, patient services, porters, post room, and security.

A number of members of the Committee are due to hold their quarterly meeting with the NHS Trust shortly, and we asked them to take up this issue then and report back.

We had a long discussion about NHS dentistry in times of COVID. Dental surgeries are working at about 25 per cent of previous activity levels, due to the need to focus on urgent treatment for people in pain, and to allow time for aerosols caused by sprays from drills and other equipment to settle before surfaces are cleaned down between patients. We were concerned at the long-term effects on dental health of delays in routine treatment, hygienist appointments, and check-ups – and also at the potentially increasing inequality of treatment and care. My colleague Cllr Lucy Nethsingha raised the issue of children’s check-ups, and we wondered whether these could be offered off-site to free more time and space in surgeries.

We discussed the latest COVID update, and the rise in cases. I asked about arrangements for Halloween, Bonfire Night, and Remembrance, and was told that Government guidance was still awaited and that the local Public Health team didn’t want to conflict with this or send mixed messages. Frankly, Government, it’s all getting a little late.

We were united in our concern at proposals for recommissioning of children and young people’s mental health counselling services which would have removed access for these services from 18-25 year olds in Cambridgeshire. We felt that it was not clear that adult counselling services would be either available or suitable, and it was clear that there was no expectation that the money currently spent on this age group would be moved to meet their needs in another way. So we asked for this paper to come back and to be clearer about meeting the needs of young adults.

We talked about children and families in light of COVID. The paper we were given was somewhat light on detail, and referred to us being in ‘the recovery phase’ of COVID, when it doesn’t feel like that at all as case numbers rise again. I asked about breastfeeding now that mothers aren’t getting face to face support in most cases, and was heartened to hear that numbers of mothers breastfeeding appear to have increased in the first quarter of the year. We had previously (pre-COVID) received a report about the much lower numbers of breastfeeding mothers in Fenland, and it’s not yet clear whether that inequality has been affected in any way by COVID. It was good to hear that a new contract is in place with the National Childbirth Trust to provide breastfeeding support in Fenland.

We received a report on homelessness, with the shocking statistic that ‘the mean age of death of homeless people (44) is 32 years lower than the general population, and even lower for homeless women at just 42. The move of so many homeless people nationally into accommodation at the start of lockdown did leave one wondering why that couldn’t have been done without a virus. There have been large bids from Cambridge and Peterborough for funds to support homeless people, because that is where the need is, and a much smaller bid from East Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, and South Cambridgeshire.

Finally, in considering the agenda plan for future meetings, I drew the committee’s attention to the damning report by the Care Quality Commission into the ‘toxic culture’ at the East of England Ambulance Trust, and suggested we needed to see them at Health Committee to ask them what they were doing about it. As the Trust covers so many counties, this may be difficult, as everyone will be wanting to ask the Trust some searching questions, but we agreed to try.

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.

Ottobah Cugoano, from Ghana, lived in the second half of the eighteenth century and was a campaigner for the abolition of slavery. Captured and sold into slavery at the age of 13, he was shipped to Grenada where he worked on a plantation. In 1772 he was purchased by an English merchant who took him to England, where he was taught to read and write, and was freed following the ruling in the Somersett Case (1772). Many Englishmen misinterpreted this case as outlawing slavery, which in fact it did not.

Later working for artists Richard and Maria Cosway, he became acquainted with British political and cultural figures including the poet and artist William Blake and the Prince of Wales, and joined the Sons of Africa, a group of African abolitionists in England.

In 1786 he played a key role in the case of a kidnapped black man who was to be shipped back to the West Indies, by contacting a well-known abolitionist, who was able to have the man removed from the ship before it sailed. (Possibly one of those pesky ‘activist lawyers’ we hear so much about from the Government these days.)

In 1787, possibly with the help of his friend Olaudah Equiano (see No 2 in my series for this month) Cugoano published an attack on slavery entitled Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil and Wicked Traffic of the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species. The work was sent to King George III, the Prince of Wales, and leading politician Edmund Burke, though it does not appear to have changed the mind of the King on the subject of the slave trade.

Four years later, in 1791, Cugoano published a shorter version of his book, but nothing is known of him after this.

Just two months ago, it was announced that Cugoano is to be honoured with a blue plaque in London.

More about Ottobah Cugoano at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottobah_Cugoano

The petition organised by residents in East Cambridgeshire needs 100 more signatures from East Cambs residents today if it’s to be allowed to be debated at the District Council’s meeting next Thursday.

To achieve a debate in the (online) council meeting next Thursday evening, the organisers need over 2,000 signatures from people living in the East Cambridgeshire district.

And they’re about 100 short.

The signatures from Chatteris residents are wonderful evidence of support, but the district council won’t count them as Chatteris is in Fenland.

So if you live in East Cambridgeshire, haven’t yet signed the petition, and believe that Mepal Outdoor Centre should be allowed a future as an outdoor leisure and activity centre, please head to https://www.change.org/p/ecdc-mepal-outdoor-centre-to-remain-a-leisure-centre and sign the petition.

A positive and productive meeting of the County Council’s Environment & Sustainability Committee this morning, with Cllr Graham Wilson, Anna Bradnam, and myself in attendance from the Lib Dem team.

Graham asked for reference to be made in the minutes of the Fens Flooding Tactical Plan debate from the previous meeting, to the activities of other agencies, not just the IDBs, in maintaining flood defences.

I asked for a timeline for the completion and submission of the County Council’s revised response to the Northstowe Phase 3 planning applications. Officers to circulate a timeline, while the County Council continues to maintain its holding objection to the proposals.

We received an excellent report on carbon valuation, with the council setting out on a journey to price up the carbon impact of the business cases it receives for new project. No real money will be charged at this stage, but it’s an important first step in ensuring that we take decarbonising seriously.

The first grim reports on the council’s financial position have begun to be presented to committees as a precursor to setting the coming year’s budget. Anna and Graham sought assurances, which were given, about local councillors being engaged in discussions if any proposals were to be made which would affect recycling centres in their areas. We agreed to note and comment on this initial report, being clear that this does not mean our endorsement of any and all proposals being brought forward by the ruling Conservative group.

An initial report on the council’s capital programme was also approved on the same basis.

Council officers were complimented on their hard work on a draft revised heat agreement for the council’s proposed Swaffham Prior heating scheme, which will be presented to residents for review on Wednesday 21 October. A number of changes are being proposed including a review of the tariffs and the withdrawal of a proposed cancellation charge.

We discussed the council’s draft response to the Government’s controversial Planning For The Future White Paper. Anna and Graham commented on the importance of water sufficiency, if large developments in Cambridgeshire are to be rushed through in the driest area in the country. The White Paper starts by blaming councils for the slow rate of housebuilding – quite wrongly, as there are a million homes nationwide which have been given permission but remain unbuilt, as developers bank land and slow the release of new housing to keep prices high.

Finally Anna raised an important issue about bio-security in the council’s approach to its tree and woodland strategy.

Not for the first time, most Conservative councillors remained almost totally silent for the whole of the meeting, leaving opposition councillors to lead the debate.

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.

Sara Forbes Bonetta, originally named Omoba Aina, was born in 1843 as an Egbado princess of the Yoruba people in West Africa. She was orphaned during a war with the nearby Kingdom of Dahomey, and at the age of five she became the slave of King Ghezo of Dahomey.

Two years later she was liberated from slavery by Captain Forbes of the British Royal Navy, who had arrived on a diplomatic mission to try to end Dahomey’s participation in the Atlantic slave trade. King Ghezo refused this request, and offered Aina as a gift. Forbes feared that she might end up as a human sacrifice, so he accepted her on behalf of the Queen and returned to Britain.  

Captain Forbes renamed her Sara Forbes Bonetta, after his ship the HMS Bonetta. In 1850 she met Queen Victoria who had her raised as her goddaughter. In 1851 she was sent to school in Sierra Leone. She returned to England in 1855, when she was 12 and was entrusted to the care of a clergyman and his wife in Gillingham.

In 1862, Sara attended the wedding of Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Alice, and in August of that year she married Yoruba businessman Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies. After their wedding the couple moved back to Africa, where they had three children. Many of Sara’s descendants now live in either England or Sierra Leone, with a separate family branch remaining prominent in Nigeria.

Sara Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis in 1880 in Funchal, Madeira, and is buried there.

More about Sara Forbes Bonetta at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Forbes_Bonetta

(With thanks to Bill Prenzlau for suggesting Sara Forbes Bonetta as a subject for this series.)