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Dido Belle (Lindsay) and her cousin Elizabeth Lindsay, painted by Zoffany, 1779
A painting of Dido Belle (Lindsay) and her cousin Elizabeth Lindsay, painted by Zoffany, 1779.
Dido Elizabeth Belle, 1763?-1804, was the illegitimate daughter of John Lindsay, a captain in the Royal Navy, and an unnamed black woman who might have been free but was probably enslaved. Dido was sent to England and placed in the care of her great uncle William Murray, Lord Mansfield, who was already looking after Dido's white cousin Elizabeth Lindsay.
Dido was not treated as an equal member of the family, possibly because of her illegitimacy or possibly because if her mother was enslaved then Dido too was technically a slave until her freedom was legally confirmed in 1793. She wasn't, for example, allowed to dine with the rest of the family if they had guests. A visiting American, Hutchinson, said:
"A Black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies and after…walked with the company in the gardens, one of the young ladies having her arm within the other… He [Lord Mansfield] calls her Dido, which I suppose is all the name she has. He knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her [...]".
Dido was made responsible for the dairy and poultry yards at Kenwood House, Lord Mansfield's residence in Hampstead. She received an annual allowance of £30 10s, several times the annual wages of a female servant, while her cousin Elizabeth received around £100. Dido also acted as a secretary for Lord Mansfield and, with his other nieces, took care of him after his wife’s death.
When Dido's father John Lindsay died in 1788, he left her £1000 in his will and asked his wife Mary to look after her. Mary Lindsay's later will didn't mention Dido but Lord Mansfield left her £500 and a £100 annuity in his 1793 will and, demonstrating his awareness that Dido might be abducted from the streets (as many of the free black population of Britain were), he recorded: "I confirm to Dido Elizabeth Belle her Freedom".
Dido Belle married a steward named John Davinier in 1794 and subsequently had three sons. She died in July 1804.
Ironically, her last known descendant was a white South African living free under apartheid.
(Cobbled together from several sources.)
Posts: 42981 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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Thank you for reminding us of this piece. Dido is Fanny Price of 'Mansfield Park' by Jane Austen (1814). She is presented as a niece of Mrs. Bertram, a child of another Ward sister who married a white man and was cut off from the family. Austen never says Mr. Price is white, but it can be conjured up by reading carefully. Her other aunt cautions her 'not to forget what she is' meaning she is a mulatto. She is treated as house slaves, who were usually half-whites and related to the masters. They were the first to be given manumission, had some money, and were snapped up by newly arrived Europeans. According to the image, the other person was white, but as a member of the elite she could not have been white. The painter Sir Alan Ramsey, like Zoffany; made his clients white looking, as he did with that Scottish philosopher who said nasty things about Blacks. Ramsey was related to the white girl. Judge Mansfield ruled something on the position of slaves once settled in Britain for six months, they are free. Or something. This same ruling was also made in the Netherlands regarding slaves from Suriname arriving with their master and staying over six months. There was a famous case of a slave of Salomon Du Plessis who left his masters service to join the German ambassador.
Posts: 5454 | From: Holland | Registered: Aug 2008
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