← After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal
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- [00:00]
Anthony Delaney
Hi, we're your hosts Anthony Delaney and Maddy Pelling and if you would like After Dark Myths, Misdeeds and the Paranormal ad free and get early access.
- [00:10]
Maddy Pelling
Sign up to History Hit with a History Hit subscription. You can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week.
- [00:21]
Anthony Delaney
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:28]
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- [01:58]
Dariona's Dad
The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariona. We call him Dae Date for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge. And there's this huge responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job.
- [02:19]
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- [02:29]
Anthony Delaney
Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Anthony.
- [02:31]
Maddy Pelling
And I'm Maddie.
- [02:32]
Anthony Delaney
And today's story is one that takes us to a very, very familiar location. It is the Tower of London, but highlights a history that you might not be so well acquainted with. To tell us a little bit more, here's Maddie.
- [02:53]
Maddy Pelling
1691. Inside the tower of London, there are lions. They prowled and padded around their dens. The keeper of the lions was a man called Thomas Dimmock, and the building he lived in was aptly called the Lion Tower. Inside the kitchens of Lion Tower were ale, oats and milk. Standing over these were rat poison. In his hand was Edward Francis. Edward was an enslaved man owned by Thomas Dimmock, the keeper of the lions. Edward was black, almost certainly born in Africa before being captured and brought to London. While the lions roared outside the window, Edward tipped the powdered poison into his enslaver's food. It is an incendiary moment at the symbolic heart of English power. There's so much going on here, so many layers of imprisonment and power being exerted within the Tower's wall in a story that reaches out into surrounding London and across oceans. Welcome to After Dark. This is the story of the poison in the Tower of London.
- [04:31]
Anthony Delaney
I am so looking forward to this one because we. We were recording with today's guest, Misha Yuen, who I'll give a proper introduction to in just a moment. We were recording with her last month it would have been, I guess, and that was about the Virginia Dare episode. So go back and listen to that if you haven't already listened to it. But I heard Misha and Freddie chatting as I was preparing for the next episode, whatever, and Misha was on her way out and I was like, what is that episode? And this is that episode. So I'm excited to talk about it. As I said in the very opening, we are in the Tower of London, so something that we're very, very familiar with here in After D. This history is not linked to Anne Boleyn. It is not linked to water Raleigh. These are people that we so often talk about when we talk about the Tower. Instead, we're following the history of a marginalised person, that of Edward Francis. And as I said, here to guide us through that history is Dr. Misha Yuen, and now part of the extended After Dark family, of course. Misha is a historian at the University of Sussex and author of the Virginia American Colonisation and English Society 1580-1660. Mischa welcome back.
- [05:39]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Thank you. So great to be here again. I'm really excited to share this story with you.
- [05:43]
Maddy Pelling
I am genuinely so excited about this, not least because. And we will get on to how you came across this story, Misha. But it's one of those histories that gets uncovered. It's unexpected. You found it out. It's so exciting. I'm so looking forward to getting into it before we venture into this particular era in this part of London. Anthony, do you want a little bit of context?
- [06:06]
Anthony Delaney
Go on, Maddy, give me some time. Context as to what we're dealing with during this particular moment in time. I think we're late 17th century, right?
- [06:15]
Maddy Pelling
We are. We absolutely are. So the timeline for this story is between 1687 and 1692, which is a pretty exciting time of change, I suppose. So in terms of big cultural events, we have Isaac Newton publishing the Prince of Peer and, you know, introducing the laws of motion and gravity. Ever heard of it?
- [06:34]
Anthony Delaney
No. Brand new information to me.
- [06:36]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, we have the Great Fire of Lond. London, a generation before, in 1666. And you know, when people are always like, what period of time would you travel back to? And as an 18th century. So I always have to say the 18th century. But I always do think privately about this moment just after the Great Fire of London, in those two decades afterwards, when the city's starting to be rebuilt and that cityscape is changing from those old, very close, narrow, medieval streets full of wooden houses. And one of the big buildings that's been created in this moment is St. Paul's Cathedral. The building for that is, by the point of our story in 1687, well underway in 1688. So a year into this story, we're going to get the Glorious Revolution when King James is deposed by William and Mary, his own daughter and son in law. And this is a struggle that extends to Ireland in 1790 with the battle of the Boyne, which is a battle between James and William's troops. In 1692, we get British troops up in Scotland dispatched to Glencoe and we get the Glencoe Massacre. We have done an episode on that. So if you haven't listened to that yet, go back and find it because it's a really interesting, surprising and bloody history. Also across the pond, the Salem witch trials are beginning in this moment. So it's a pretty significant few years, I would say it is.
- [07:52]
Anthony Delaney
And actually just listening to you rattle that off there, when you hear it all rattling on. No, no, no. But like, you know, just going one after, when you hear it all together. Because actually, in my head, those things are, yeah, somewhat connected, but actually, when you hear them one after the other, just there, there's an awful lot happening on a kind of a global. On a global scale. And this history, Misha, brings in some of that global history as well. So before we get into the nitty gritty of it, this history is new, I would say, to probably most people who are listening today, certainly is new to me. Tell us how you, before we get into it, how you came across the history of Edward Francis.
- [08:33]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Well, at the time, I was working as a curator for historic royal palaces, so part of my role was to look into the histories of colonisation, of people of colour who had lived in the palaces in the early modern period. And actually, there had already been some work done around this person known as Edward Francis. But this research wasn't particularly detailed, there wasn't much depth to it, not all of the archival sources had been examined. And significantly, for me, this story wasn't being told at the Tower of London itself, so it wasn't something that at that time, we were presenting to our visitors. So I was really keen to kind of go back to the archival stories, try to piece together a bit more about this person, importantly, find out if he was connected to an earlier document, which was a advertisement placed in a newspaper for a runaway enslaved person, which we might come onto in a moment. But significantly, for me, this was about kind of getting this story out there as well and making sure that this was something that was being shared to people who came to the Tower, to realise that there are these other histories there, that it's not just about royalty and prisoners, as you've already mentioned, but that the Tower was connected to these much more global changes that are taking place at this time, to do with colonisation, to do with enslavement in the Atlantic world.
- [09:47]
Maddy Pelling
It is a sort of historian's dream, really, to be able to add a new story to a site like the Tower of London that is just so globally well known. And some of its more famous stories are so well rehearsed, they're so familiar to us. And Anthony mentioned some of those at the beginning. Give us an idea, Misha, of what the Tower of London looked like in the moment of our story. And we've heard in the introduction there were lions there. So for anyone who's not been to the Tower of London or doesn't know much of its history, what was it like in this moment?
- [10:14]
Dr. Misha Yuen
I mean, in some ways, the fabric of the Tower of London hasn't changed hugely since the 17th century. So the space that you walk around today won't have looked much different in terms of kind of the structures of some of the buildings. So the white Tower that you visit today was still there in the 17th century, but the kind of location of the lion office was where there was also a tower menagerie. And if you go to Tower of London today, you'll see these wire sculptures of lions in situ. So it kind of gives you an indication of where this place was. And this menagerie had existed since the 13th century, and by the 17th century, it was actually a bit of a tourist attraction. So people might have come to the Tower just to look at the animals that were there that included these lions. And then, yeah, obviously how Thomas Dimmock comes into the story is that he had this position as the keeper of the lions, which was a very prestigious role, something that people were keen to acquire.
- [11:06]
Anthony Delaney
And Edward's history, who we're here to talk about today, is very closely linked to this Dimmock character. Right. What do we know about Edward himself? Where did he come from and why was he at the Tower?
- [11:19]
Dr. Misha Yuen
So this was kind of part of the research that I wanted to do. So Edward Francis first appears in the historical archive through this court case and testimony that is given at the Tower of London, but a few years earlier. So four years before, in 1687, Thomas Dimmock had posted a newspaper advertisement in the London Gazette seeking the return of a runaway enslaved boy who was described as being 16 years old, as wearing this silver collar around his neck. And this boy was described as speaking bad English, as having holes in both of his ears. And so I wanted to try and find out, you know, was it possible that this young boy who had been described in this earlier newspaper, notice, this enslaved boy, he was probably African born, whether or not that was the same individual as Edward Francis. And I think looking at some of the historical material, to me strongly suggested that it was the same person. So it's likely that Edward Francis, as he came to be known, had been sold into slavery in West Africa, possibly trafficked straight from West Africa to England by the Royal African Company and purchased by Thomas Dimmock as an enslaved person, and then was enslaved at the Tower of London. So by the time we encounter Edward Francis in the historical record in 1692, it's possible that he'd already been a resident of the Tower of London, an enslaved resident for five years or more.
- [12:51]
Maddy Pelling
So amazing, that newspaper advertisement. I mean, it's so harrowing to Hear that? And it's a really difficult history to kind of to be confronted with. I'm really interested, Amisha, in the description of his person because of course, the point of an advert like that is to find someone who has run away. And would you say that this is typical of the time in terms of enslaved people who are described or sort of coded, I suppose, in their physicality, both in terms of possibly their African origins. You mentioned the holes that he has in his ears and that he's described as speaking bad English. But then he also has this silver collar around his neck which very much shows him as a piece of property. There's something so fascinating from this perspective to be able to come almost into contact with someone like Edward and that we have such a description of what he was wearing, what his body looked like. Is that how lots of enslaved people in this moment are described?
- [13:49]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Yeah. So, I mean, these newspaper advertisements, there are hundreds which survive for the 17th and 18th centuries, and not just in London and other major ports like Bristol and Portsmouth, but also, you know, smaller towns and cities too. And it's really common to find these kinds of detailed physical descriptions of enslaved people, people who were African born, but also people from the Indian subcontinent as well who are enslaved. And often you will find that these descriptions might mention things such as what we would now think of as country marks. So scars that African born people may have received in the adolescence, for example. And it's because, you know, the purpose of these newspaper advert advertisements is to be able to identify these people, you know, within these kind of metropolitan urban spaces. They're often described, you know, in the clothes that were last seen wearing, whether or not they took any property with them. So whether they stole any property from their enslavers. And the collars that you mentioned as well, they are fairly common to see in these newspaper advertisements. More often it seems to be young enslaved men or boys that wore collars, and they may have been made from steel as well as silver and copper, and likely engraved with the name and even the address of their enslaver. So all of these detail that we get in these newspaper advertisements are really fascinating not just for kind of understanding the way that people are being racialized in this period and who the enslaved population is in Britain at this time, but also tells us a little bit about the motivations and sometimes the experiences of enslaved people. So Edward Francis, for example, the newspaper advertisement is posted on the 5th of January, but it says that he'd actually run away on the 30th of December. So we know that he's managed to stay free for almost an entire week. He's wearing two coats. It's likely that he's put on two coats because he knows the weather is going to be cold. And so, I mean, there's kind of, you know, ways that you can really analyse and read into these documents something more about, you know, the kind of mentalities and worldviews of enslaved people as well, which are so hard to reach, usually in the historical archive. And obviously these records are still incredibly limited, but, you know, there are ways that historians are now using them to try and discover more about the lives of enslaved people in early modern Britain.
- [16:11]
Anthony Delaney
When I was looking through these notes yesterday, Misha, in preparation for today's recordings, that image of the color was something that really stuck with me. And kind of, I don't know, it hammers home sometimes. It's often a piece of material culture. Right. That will do that because it starts to infuse histories with people in a very immediate way. And the fact that there was this silver collar around his neck that said Thomas Dimmock at the Lyon office, it really hammers home this idea of how black people were viewed or enslaved. Black people were viewed as property in England at this time. And I think sometimes it's very easy for us to think that the slavery that we talk about in history classes in just general society was happening over there somewhere that is the Caribbean, let's say, or it had something got to do with an African trade that was coming to North America. But of course, this is a far more complex picture, and this is starting to show some of that complexity. So one thing which I think would be really useful, Misha, if you could help us understand a little bit about the context of slavery at this stage, specifically in England, and then how that contrasts with what's happening in terms of its place in the empire.
- [17:26]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Yeah, I think there's a reason that this history in context is quite confusing for people. And when I have conversations with friends or members of the public about this history often comes back to me that, yeah, people didn't realize that there were enslaved people in Britain at this time. One of the reasons for that is that slavery occupied this slightly murky, shaky, grey legal area, if you like. So it was never legally codified in English law. In the 17th century, there had been certain rulings within English courts that said that black enslaved people could be treated as property. So just a few years before the story that we're talking about, there'd been a ruling in 1677 that said that black enslaved people could be treated as property. But these were legal rulings. So it wasn't the same as having it kind of set down in law in the same way that we see slavery being codified in places like Barbados and Virginia. But I think looking at some of the evidence that we have now, you know, like these newspaper advertisements, like the fact that people wore these collars around the necks really symbolizes to us that they were treated differently to English servants at this time, that they were viewed as property and that they were enslaveable within British and English contexts. And I think, you know, my own research is on the 17th century Atlantic world, so places like Virginia and Barbados. And I think what I increasingly realise is how connected these places were, not just socially, because people are moving through these spaces, but also culturally and legally and economically as well. So the Royal African Company, for example, is trading from West Africa to the Caribbean, but also directly to England, as I mentioned. And I think we have to understand that people in England have knowledge of what has taken place in these colonial contexts. By the 1690s, people have been enslavable in English colonial context since, you know, for 80 years by this point. And then we know people who live in these colonial spaces. And so the idea of a black person being enslaved in England, or a person of darker skin color essentially could be somebody from South Asia as well, is not an alien or unfamiliar concept to them. And whilst there are some people who oppose it, even in this early period and think that it's, you know, unjust and immoral, it's actually something which is widely practiced and isn't something that most people would be opposed to. And if anything, for them, you know, for people in Britain, having an enslaved person within your household becomes a status symbol. It's a way of demonstrating your own wealth. And the fact that you're able to acquire this expensive of, you know, property, this human property, and having these collars around their necks is a way to symbolize that. And, you know, a silver collar, again, shows that you are somebody of wealth and status. So, you know, I think something else that might surprise people is that often enslaved people were dressed in very expensive clothing as a way to kind of show off the status and wealth of their enslavers. And that is very different from Caribbean contexts. People in Caribbean plantations don't wear collars around their necks. They're often dressed very poorly in kind of threadbare clothing. So these contexts are different and there are kind of distinct sort of meanings and different kinds of symbolism which are attached to enslaved people. But I think we have to understand that all of these what's happening in the Americas is very much impacting how enslaved people are viewed in England as well.
- [21:09]
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- [22:10]
Dariona's Dad
The thing that drives me every day as a dad is Dariana. We call him Day Date for short. Every day he's hungry for something, whether it's attention, affection, knowledge, and there's this huge response responsibility in making sure that when he's no longer under my wing that he's a good person. I want him to be able to sit back one day and go, we worked together. We did a good job.
- [22:31]
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- [22:41]
Dr. Misha Yuen
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- [22:59]
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- [23:01]
Dr. Misha Yuen
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- [23:25]
Maddy Pelling
I suppose something that's standing out for me straight away is just how important the body is of the enslaved person, whether it's Edward or anyone else that we're talking about in terms of these tensions, these narratives, these different ideas playing out. And, you know, you say about the enslaved people often having incredibly decorative and very rich fabrics at their wearing and, you know, there's having a silver collar on that. Silver is a valuable metal in this period and indeed now. So their bodies, I suppose, are sites of oppression and control. And that's symbolized in all these ways, but also symbols of white wealth as well. I think that's completely fascinating. Something that I want to clarify is the difference between people who are enslaved in London in this period, in Britain in this period, and freed black people, people who are not enslaved, because there are. We know, for example, that Edward Francis has a friend called Tom who I believe is not. Well, we don't know if he's enslaved or not. He potentially might be. But for black people living in Britain who weren't enslaved, was there protection in place? How could they differentiate themselves walking down the street? Would people be able to understand that difference? How dangerous was it for them on the streets of Britain?
- [24:44]
Dr. Misha Yuen
It's a really good question. So I haven't come across any cases of, for example, a free black person being trafficked against their will to the Caribbean to be enslaved in a Caribbean plantation. But we do know of people who make the reverse journey. So people who have been enslaved in the Caribbean perhaps come to England with their enslavers. Perhaps when their enslavers die, they gain their freedom and go on to live lives as free people of colour within Britain. You know, by the time their children or grandchildren are born, you know, very much considered free, I think, legally. I imagine that you would already always felt your position to be very precarious, and there may always have been this fear that you may be enslaveable. But actually it's something that, again, is still quite difficult to access in the historical archive. I mean, I haven't ever heard, for example, of any writings by free people of colour where they may reflect on this reality or their fears around that. But I guess it's one of the reasons that we do see certain kinds of discourses develop between Britain and the Caribbean around what is freedom versus enslavement. And one of the things that becomes an issue kind of in the period that we're talking about is baptism and whether or not if a black person such as Edward becomes. Is baptized, does that mean that they are free and enslavers in the Caribbean? You know, strongly oppose this because they're worried that if people in the Caribbean start to be baptized, that, you know, what will happen to their enslaved property. But is something that you see take place within Britain, which suggests that people of colour within Britain understand that that may be a way to protect their freedom, whether that's something, you know, whether they've been born free or whether that's a freedom that they've gained during their own lives. So I think people in Britain are aware of some of these contexts, but it's not something that is always so obvious to us in the actual historical sour.
- [26:45]
Anthony Delaney
Misha. Let's tie some of the two ends of the story together then. So we have this menagerie at the Tower and we have Thomas Dimmock and we know that Edward is enslaved by Thomas. How does Edward and Thomas link to the menagerie? What's the link there? Just so we have all that information before we move forward with the actual story. We're not even fascinating at all as this is. We're actually not even at the story yet. So just give us that context before we move forward.
- [27:11]
Dr. Misha Yuen
So Thomas Dimmock is the keeper of the lions. So this is a position which you are granted by a royal warrant, essentially. So he's not necessarily an expert in the keeping of animals and it's unlikely that he would have actually been involved in the day to day care of these animals. And we know that Edward Francis is an enslaved person within the Dymock household. It's possible that Edward may have had some involvement in the care of the lions. But again, that isn't something that we necessarily. We haven't seen that in the historical record. But we do know that he's performing different kinds of domestic duties within the Dimmock household alongside an English servant as well. So he's enslaved at the Tower of London, but very much within the Dymock household. You know, this kind of family household. Dymock has a wife and he has a daughter as well. So as much as this is a kind of institutional setting, we also have to think of this as a kind of family domestic setting as well for the Dymock family and Edward being part of that household.
- [28:10]
Maddy Pelling
Okay, so we have this household, which is already an unusual household in that it is within the Tower of London. They are there for the purpose of looking after some lions. These are not typical things in the 17th century in England. Where does Edward get this idea to poison his master from? Are you able to trace in the archive that moment when he makes that decision or he first thinks about doing this.
- [28:36]
Dr. Misha Yuen
So what we know about this episode comes from the testimony that Edward Thomas Dimmock, Thomas's wife and Thomas's servant, later gives. So all of this is kind of, you know, in retrospect, them kind of recounting the events. But Edward mentions that in the summer of 1691, he had approached a black man named Tom who lived on Mincing Lane, and he'd had a conversation with Tom about rat poison and whether or not rat poison would be effective at making people unwell. So by the summer of 1691, we know that Edward, according to his own testimony, is considering adding poison to the Dymock family's food. He says that he then bought a parcel of rat poison from the rat killer who had previously supplied the Dimmock household with rat poison, and he started adding it to the family's food in the summer of 1691. And we think this is kind of sporadic, taking place over a kind of longer period of time.
- [29:40]
Maddy Pelling
It's interesting that he's doing it sporadically, and I wonder if at this early stage, and I don't want to give away too much of the story, but what is Edward's intention here? Is it murder? Is it some form of resistance against his own enslavement? Is it a sort of moral punishment? What's going through his head? Because it doesn't seem, at least to begin with, that he is actively trying to end their lives.
- [30:09]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Yeah, I think what's really interesting, actually, is that that's a question that is never directly put to Edward by the constable of Tower of London who questions him. He's never directly asked, you know, what were your motivations and why did you do this? Other people report his motivations, but we never get a clear sense from him, in his own words, of what he hoped to achieve. And I. This was something that I grappled with a lot myself when I was doing the research. You know, my first instinct was that, yeah, this was a form of resistance, that perhaps he did think by making them unwell, perhaps even killing the household, that he might gain his freedom. But there's always this practical question of, well, what would that have actually looked like in practice? I mean, if the whole entire household had died? You know, Edward was considered enslaved and property, so he may just have likely been been given to somebody else and enslaved in a different household. So it's hard to say whether or not he envisioned complete freedom for himself, or perhaps he just wanted to be out of this particular situation. I think what we probably can say is that this is a very desperate individual, somebody who I think over, you know, a number of years had tried to gain his freedom in different ways. If we do link him back to this earlier newspaper advertisement, which, you know, I think is likely that that is him. You know, he tried running away once before. He'd been been recaptured and enslaved again within the Dymock household, but also within the testimony of other members of the household. They refer to him breaking locks as well and saying that, you know, you should have been punished for this a long time ago. So clearly he's tried other ways to kind of escape his slavery. At the same time, though, we get this contrast that he obviously does have certain kind of freedoms, you know, mobility beyond the walls of the Tower of London, the fact that he's able to go out to Mincing Lane and have. Have this conversation. So it gives us again, just this kind of complex picture of what being enslaved was like on a day to day basis. For me, even the idea that he has access to the family kind of, you know, food and meals, again, tells us something about just how integrated he was within the household at the same time as he was treated so differently as well.
- [32:18]
Maddy Pelling
I feel like I know him from what you're saying. I do feel like we are getting closer to who this person was.
- [32:24]
Anthony Delaney
It's such a basic thing to say, but I am so rooting for him. And, you know, you do draw your own conclusions, don't you? Because I agree with you, Misha. I think it's most likely that the runaway that you're talking about at the beginning probably is him. And therefore we have this pattern of behavior that's starting to come together of him understanding that there is a freedom that he is entitled to and that he purposely pursues. And we see that even in the locks that you're talking about then afterwards. And then we see that when he tries to leave. And we see it in, I think then probably his attempt to poison the family. And we'll come to some of those details in just a second. But I also love this idea that it's to another black man that he turns when he's talking about this plan to poison the family. And there's something about that too, which again is just cracking open a world that we have so little access to actually where we go, oh, there's somebody leaving those boundaries of the walls of the Tower of London, this kind of institutional mecca, and they're going out into Mincing Lane and having conversations that hope to in some ways topple Those institutions of power. And that, to me, is just all about what history is. It's making me so excited, as you can probably tell from the speed of my voice. And I'm tripping over my words. Besides this kind of tantalizing glimpse of. And I literally have chills talking about it. It's so exciting. Misha, you're just so lucky to be able to look at these things when you were looking at it. Once we come back within the walls, then, of the Tower of London, how did that poisoning start to manifest? How is he? I presume he's. It's infiltrating the food supply that you're talking, that he had access to.
- [34:09]
Dr. Misha Yuen
So in the testimony that we get from the household, they describe Thomas Dimmock's first wife, who was named Jane, becoming ill. And it sounds as if she was ill already. She's actually being nursed. You know, a nurse has come into the household to try and look after her, and she then dies that summer. And then a few months later, we know that Thomas Dimock has by now remarried a woman named Rebecca, which probably wasn't unusual. You know, he has a daughter. He would have wanted a new wife to kind of take up that role within the household. And all this time, or kind of, you know, restarts that Edward is now adding the poison to the family's meal. They're becoming sick. Even the maid says that, you know, she was complaining of stomach aches. It's not until the family's cat dies that they become really suspicious that something untoward has been taking place. But then when the family kind of look back on these events, they kind of see this pattern that, yeah, actually, we had all been coming a bit sick from the things that we were eating. And so, I mean, I just find this testimony fascinating on so many different levels. I mean, there are so many layers to this. And I think one of them is, as you say, it kind of gives us a glimpse into this community of free and enslaved black people who were living in London at this time. But for me, what really kind of struck me was the role of these women within the household. So Thomas's wife, Rebecca, and the maid, Joanna, the ways that they kind of survey Edward, the way that they are kind of, like, watching him and are kind of suspicious of his behavior. And this was interesting for me, because one of the things that I'm interested in is the role that women have as well in shoring up slavery within England and within colonial context at this time. So they are just as implicated, if you like in his enslavement and the way that he's treated. And we very much get a sense of that from the testimony that they give.
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- [37:13]
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- [37:52]
Maddy Pelling
You're making me feel like we've stepped into this household, Misha, and there's so much there about the consumption of food. You know, you talk about the fact that even the maid Joanna is starting to feel ill and is therefore presumably eating and consuming drinking. Maybe the same things as her master and mistress and the daughter Anne. So straight away we get a sense of how the household operates, where people sit within that hierarchy. Tell me more about how Edward himself is suspected. And as you say, it presumably comes down to the women being suspicious of him. But why is it him in particular, not for example, the maid, who is caught for this eventually?
- [38:35]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Well, we get this description of a confrontation between Thomas Dimmock and Edward, and this description is given by Thomas Dimmock's wife, Rebecca. And in it, you know, Thomas rails at Edward something along the lines of, you know, have I been so bloody to you that you would think to kill me? You know, did you think to get your liberty by killing me? And put on the spot, Edward answers yes, that he did think to get his liberty by murdering Thomas Dimmock and his family.
- [39:05]
Maddy Pelling
This moment, when Edward says yes to that question, Misha, that gives me chills because we get his voice, albeit, yes, filtered through. I think it's Rebecca, the second wife, isn't it, recalling this incident at that point? But we have the words that he spoke. How unusual is that? First of all, in terms of getting the words of someone enslaved in the 17th century in England or indeed across its empire, but also to you as a researcher, when you see his words on the page in the archive, what does that mean to you? How do you respond to that, as someone who wants to tell this history, but also as a human being? You know, it's remarkable. It's almost mind blowing. We've come so close to his body through the description of him in this advert, if indeed that is him. But here we have his words, we have his voice, essentially. I mean, it's incredible.
- [39:59]
Dr. Misha Yuen
Yeah. I mean, these four documents really took my breath away. So all I knew about Edward up to this point was, you know, I'd seen kind of brief mentions in a book about them, Menagerie, you know, the lion keeper who was poisoned by his enslaved person. And then I'd seen the runaway newspaper notice. But there was nothing that was helping me kind of piece together how these things might be connected. And when I looked at the testimony, you know, these are these handwritten, signed documents. They're incredibly detailed. You know, you have. You can kind of hear the people's voices because, you know, they're written in with this kind of, you know, phonetic 17th century, very idiosyncratic language. But when I saw that Edward had also deposed and that he'd signed this document as well, I just kept thinking about what that experience must have been like for him, being questioned at the Tower of London by the constable. At this point, I imagine really being in fear of his own life, understanding that he was in extreme danger and signing this document and it just. Yeah, I don't know, there's just something very moving about it and like you say, incredibly unusual as well. So I. I still do not know of an equivalent document that has survived for this period. There are court cases involving other enslaved black people. So Catherine, orca is an enslaved woman who lives in London at this time, not far from the Tower of London, actually. And she appears before a court trying to gain her freedom from her enslaver, who has returned to Barbados. And there are other ways in which, you know, enslaved black people kind of crop up in the historical record and archive, but nothing like this testimony that we get for Edward Francis, with his mark as well there. So, yeah, I haven't had a moment like that, I don't think, actually, in my time researching it was really, actually quite powerful and emotional as well, and especially because of the context and thinking about what this person had endured. And Anthony, you were kind of saying, like, you know, he must have had a sense that he was entitled to his freedom, that he might be free. And also, you know, it's likely that he had had enjoyed a childhood being free, with family, with loved ones in somewhere in West Africa before he was sold and trafficked to England. And so sometimes we kind of put these people kind of out of their context, I don't know, in a way that we kind of see them in this moment when they're enslaved and we kind of forget that, you know, they had these. These entire lives as well. It was something really meaningful to research and. Yeah, meant a lot, actually, at the time, to kind of see his own words and his. His hand as well.
- [42:32]
Anthony Delaney
One of the things that I know is that you then were able to identify the room in which he was questioned following his arrest in the Tower. And, you know, when you were working for historic royal palaces. And one of the reasons that we were so keen to have you share this history was because in learning more about these histories in such iconic places, we little by little start to change the perception of the histories that took place behind those walls. And I'm just wondering what it felt like for you then to stand in that space and to experience that space with Edward over your shoulder, almost, because you're bringing that and he's bringing you into that space. And it becomes a very poignant exchange.
- [43:16]
Dr. Misha Yuen
I would imagine there was something really unique, I think, about being able to do this research and think about his story whilst essentially working within this space. You know, we had an office at the Tower of London and so I was able to draw on all of the expertise of my colleagues there. And I said to them, you know, he is questioned by the Consul of the Tower of London. Where did this take place? And said, well, the most likely location is the kind of great room in Queen's House. And I'd been in that room before for a staff meeting or presentations or something. But it's this vaulted, I guess, to a state. It looks like a kind of, you know, grand dining room. You know, it's kind of vaulted ceiling, these dark timber beams. It still has this dark wooden paneling around it. It very much feels like a Tudor space. And it's the room where Guy Fawkes was questioned. And even now, there are these religious images on the walls of kind of hell and suffering and then kind of demons that my colleague said, you know, they were there to scare people, to intimidate them, to kind of make them think about confession and kind of honesty and truth and, you know, the kind of punishments that they might receive for, you know, committing such heinous moral crimes. And so if Edward was brought into this space, I mean, prisoners at the Tower were questioned elsewhere, sometimes in the White Tower, for example. But if he was brought to this space, which is most likely, those surroundings would have been very intimidating, almost kind of imperial, I think, in context as well, as well as kind of, you know, royal and symbolic. But, you know, at this time, the Tower of London very much, you know, it is a space at the heart of the English Empire. It's a space at the heart of. Of English imperial power, English royal institutional power as well. And I think all of that kind of surrounding, you know, this is a fortress, it's a prison, it's a community as well. But all of this would have been intimidating for Edward Francis, and in some ways, I think just kind of adds to how remarkable his story is. Unfortunately, the Queen's House isn't a space that visitors to the Tower of London normally go into, because it's still actually occupied by the constable of the Tower of London today. But it's something that, yeah, as curators, we would able to kind of get access to. And, yes, it is an amazing space with this kind of rich and very complicated history.
- [45:33]
Maddy Pelling
Yeah, it's amazing to think that Edward is potentially questioned in the same space as Guy Fawkes. And it kind of inserts him into a broader English history and brings some of that complication to it, Actually. We found out so much about him, Misha. Through your research, you've managed to uncover his voice, something of his person, something of his personality, even. Do we know what happens to him in the end?
- [45:59]
Dr. Misha Yuen
So this is the part of the history that is, I guess, most in some ways, opaque and confusing and something that continues to interest scholars as well, because it does raise particular questions about Edward's legal status, but also the legal status of other enslaved people in England at this time. So, unfortunately, the records of the Old Bailey. So he does go to trial at Old Bailey, but those records for those few months when he is tried haven't survived. So there's no chance that they are ever going to be recovered. They're not lost. They just. They haven't survived. But we do know that Edward is released after a few months with a fine of only 10 groats. And this seems very lenient considering that potentially he's been put on trial for attempted murder, but we actually don't know what he is tried for. And I've spoken to other scholars about this. Why may he have been released with only a fine? You know, how was he able to pay that fine? Who paid that fine? And it's likely that this does come down to, yeah, this kind of grey area in English law at the time of whether Edward is a person or whether Edward is property. Can property commit crime? I think these are the kinds of questions that people have been grappling with at the time, which sounds so odd to us today. And the truth is, we may never get a very clear answer about why he was released and he wasn't punished in the way that we might expect an English person to be punished at this time. But it does clearly have something to do with his enslaved stat. In terms of what may have happened to him next, I think there are a certain number of outcomes. He may have been sent back to the Dymock household. Thomas Dimmock may have punished him. Thomas Dimock may have decided to sell Edward, perhaps, you know, put him on a ship for a Caribbean plantation, for example, where his life would have been very different. He would have still been enslaved, but he would have faced very different outcomes. But the fact is, at this moment in time, we just don't know. For me and for others who have been interested in picking up his story, he just seems to disappear from the historical archive. So this story kind of leaves us with different questions. I think it's so unique in a way, but perhaps can open up kind of more complicated ways of understanding the status that enslaved people had in English law at this time as well.
- [48:19]
Anthony Delaney
Well, frustrating and difficult and all as it is for him to disappear in that way. I'm so glad he was determined and resilient and forceful enough to appear in the first place, because essentially he does push himself into the record. It's through transgression that he makes his presence known 350 years later. And I'm just really glad that he gave the bastards hell, that he just really tried to be troublesome and that he tried to stake a claim on his own life and not let this stupid silver color determine who he was going to be. And I'm really aware actually as we're talking that there's a very good likelihood that Edward Francis is not called Edward Francis at all. It's not necessarily the name that he would have recognized or called himself by, but by God, I'm so glad that he pushed himself into that archive. It seems like a really, it seems like the only thing he could do. Misha, this has been an absolute eye opening history for me. This is not a history that I knew about. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing and I'm sure the listeners will respond in in the same way. Of course, if you've enjoyed this episode of Misha's, go back and listen to any of the others that she has had on After Dark, including the Mysteries of Roanoke and our episode on Virginia Dare, which was quite recent. Otherwise, we will leave you to think about this incredible history and maybe the next time you visit the Tower of London, you'll see the place in a whole new light. Until next time, happy listening.
- [50:01]
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Dr. Misha Yuen
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