Black History Month 6: Thomas Canry Caulker

Since 1987, October has been designated as “Black History Month” in the United Kingdom. This is an annual opportunity to reflect specifically on the men and women of the African diaspora, and to commemorate their courage and contributions. Over the course of the rest of the month, I will be publishing brief articles relevant to black history month - especially but not necessarily limited to short biographies of often neglected or largely forgotten black men in Britain that I hope might prompt further reading and research. 

Somewhere among the many graves in Stoke Newington, London’s crumbling and overgrown Abney Park Cemetery stands a grave stone to

THOMAS CANRY CAULKER,

A native of Western Africa,

Son of

Canrah Bah Caulker,

King of Bompey

Its subject was only thirteen when he died, but his name tells an obscure yet significant story. 

“Caulker” is a corruption of “Corker”, and “Thomas” was a name carried by several in the Caulker family back to Thomas Corker. Thomas Corker was born in Falmouth, Cornwall in 1669. In 1684 he became a trader and Royal Africa Company agent in the Sherbro region of Sierra Leone, where he married an African Princess of the house of Ya Kumba, known as Seniora Doll. They had two sons, Robin and Stephen, before Thomas was relocated to Gambia in 1699 and died on a visit to England in 1700. Seniora Doll died in 1722 leaving her kingdom to Robin and Stephen, who leveraged their combined European and African heritage for greater power and influence. The Caulkers would become a clan particularly feared for their involvement in the slave trade, which was thriving in Sherbro as early as 1740. John Newton set up his base of operations for slave trading in that region, before he later repented of his slave trading, became a minister and hymn-writer (most famously of Amazing Grace), and supported the abolitionist movement.

Over a century of rivalry and bloodshed passed, and around 30,000 African men and women a year were exported from Sherbro alone during the height of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Laws were passed, applicable to all those within the British Empire and under its oversight, but that does not necessarily mean they were kept. 1807 saw the Slave Trade Abolition Act but traffic nonetheless continued. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 made not only trading but owning slaves illegal throughout the Empire, with a few exceptions. But there was still demand, and so long as the demand was there, so too were willing suppliers. The Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron was set up in 1808 to combat this, and it is estimated that between 1808 and 1860 1,600 slave-trading ships were seized and 150,000 Africans were freed. It is sometimes claimed - particularly by less than helpful racial commentators in the USA - that because laws have changed, there is no such thing as systemic racism: surely the persistence of slave trafficking and slavery after Abolition Acts is a strong historical argument for the naïve short-sightedness of such a claim.

An effort was made in 1825 by the British governor of Sierra Leone to make a treaty with the Sherbro chiefs,  to stop their infighting and slave-trading. The governor however took ill and died, putting a stop to the process. Nonetheless, the gradual advance of Christianity among the Sherbro, which would accelerate after 1850, turned the factions of the Caulker clan to the side of abolition. 

Thomas Canry Caulker was born in 1846 to Richard Canry Caulker, King of the Bumpe Chiefdom. A sickly child, he was sent in the early 1850s by his father to England for Christian education in the ecclesiastical context of the Countess of Huntington’s Connexion , and to get adequate medical care. He stayed with Rev. Kirkman Foster, former president of a Dissenting Academy. 

Around this time, in 1853, Thomas’s father Richard and relative Thomas Stephen Caulker led other Sherbro chiefs in joining with the British government to draw up an agreement to assist one another in suppressing the slave trade, decades after it became illegal. The agreement was passed into British Law two years later, on 14 August 1855, as “An Act for carrying into effect the Engagements between Her Majesty and certain Chiefs of the Sherbro Country near Sierra Leone in Africa, for the more effectual Suppression of the Slave Trade.” 

Sadly, Thomas would not live to return to his father’s chiefdom to see this treaty being implemented, to teach the Christian Scriptures he was learning, or to see the gospel and social justice take root in the society of his birth. He progressively lost his sight to the point he was sent to a school for the blind. The problems went deeper than mere sight, however, and he died aged thirteen. Rev. Foster and his wife interred his remains in Abney Park Cemetery, where they too would one day be buried. 

For further reading

An Act for carrying into effect the Engagements between Her Majesty and certain Chiefs of the Sherbro Country near Sierra Leone in Africa, for the more effectual Suppression of the Slave Trade. http://www.pdavis.nl/Legis_54.htm

John Augustus Abayomi-Cole, Hope of Sherbo’s Future Greatness 1885 https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Hope_of_Sherbro%27s_Future_Greatness

Jo Loosemore, “Sailing against slavery” (BBC Devon, 28 February 2007). http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/articles/2007/03/20/abolition_navy_feature.shtml