Abstract
Accounts from those who were themselves mixing and of mixed race during the period 1900–1939 directly challenge those put forward by the media and arts to reveal a picture of visibility and acceptance in intimate, everyday interracial lives, albeit against a backdrop of racism. Insider accounts and contemporary photographs of interracial domestic settlement frequently reveal substantial commitment and domestic contentment between partners; however, the emotional and psychological toll of dealing with complex family dynamics, institutional and other racisms, as well as, at times, racial and cultural differences are plain to see. Yet insider accounts also reveal the ways in which such prejudiced practices and portrayals were refuted and challenged by the individuals and families, as well as how local attitudes towards mixedness could fluctuate between acceptance and antipathy.
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Notes
- 1.
Daily Express, 18 March 1930.
- 2.
Anita Bowes, in Bourne 2001: 39.
- 3.
Cited in Padfield (1999: 103).
- 4.
For a fascinating look at this diversity in Edwardian England, for example, see Green (1998).
- 5.
The Evening Post, 17 June 1902.
- 6.
Green (n.d.); The Nottingham Evening Post, 3 February 1908.
- 7.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 14 February 1922 and 8 July 1924.
- 8.
Gloucester Chronicle, 10 December 1904; The Standard, 21 May 1938.
- 9.
The Manchester Evening News, 31 March 1915.
- 10.
Dundee Evening Post, 22 August 1901; Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 August 1901; Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 23 August 1901.
- 11.
Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 26 April 1907.
- 12.
Supplement to the Manchester Courier, 26 April 1907; Hull Daily Mail, 23 October 1929.
- 13.
The Worcestershire Chronicle, 31 March 1900.
- 14.
After serving three years hard labour, Edalji was paroled and received a pardon in 1907, it being held that Doyle’s intervention likely playing a significant role. Doyle noted that he felt race and class had had a part to play in both Edalji’s conviction and the poison pen attacks that the family had experienced, for 'though the vicar was an amiable and devoted man, the appearance of a coloured clergyman with a half-caste son in a rude, unrefined parish was bound to cause some regrettable situation’ (Lahiri 2000: 85). Also see Lahiri for an in-depth discussion of the case.
- 15.
Western Mail, 5 November 1900.
- 16.
Such was her popularity that the theatrical magazine The Era featured her in a prominent interview on 9 November 1901.
- 17.
See www.mix-d.org/museum/timeline/1900-john-milne-and-tone-noritsune [date accessed 06.07.2017].
- 18.
Derbyshire Courier, 18 November 1911.
- 19.
St. James Gazette, 12 February 1903.
- 20.
Burnley Gazette, 22 November 1911.
- 21.
- 22.
- 23.
Shields Daily Gazette, 23 March 1923 (cited in Lawless 1995: 185–186).
- 24.
Hull Daily Mail, 28 February 1929.
- 25.
Cited in Wong (1989: 30).
- 26.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 14 November 1916.
- 27.
Western Gazette, 23 April 1920.
- 28.
Dundee Evening Telegraph, 28 January 1925.
- 29.
Lingard was later acquitted, however, due to her ‘emotional state’—the petition for her acquittal was signed by 7,000 people. It is interesting to consider whether the same leniency would have been shown if her child had been white. Evening Telegraph and Post, 7 March 1916; Western Times, 10 March 1916.
- 30.
See for example the turbulent case in Odiham, Hampshire of a ‘highly educated’ half-caste Indian woman married to a British soldier who, after having been sentenced to two months hard labour for child neglect, had taken her husband to court for maintenance as he was refusing to take her back (Reading Mercury, 14 July 1900); the dramatic suicide of a black father of eight children from Maltby, Yorkshire whose estranged white wife would not take him back (Louth and North Lincolnshire Advertiser, 22 January 1910); the six-month sentence of hard labour given to a black father living in Trethomas, Caerphilly for beating his 11-year-old ‘half caste’ daughter with a knotted rope (Dundee Evening Telegraph, 5 June 1922); and the case of an Arab husband living in South Shields who was sentenced to three months for assaulting his white wife (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 29 October 1923).
- 31.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 3 October 1934; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 5 October 1934.
- 32.
Cited in the Hull Daily Mail, 17 September 1918.
- 33.
Nottingham Evening Post, 10 June 1932.
- 34.
Cited in Killingray 2003: 59.
- 35.
For more on the fascinating life of Oei Hui Lan, see Flores (forthcoming).
- 36.
The Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 7 September 1906.
- 37.
Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 13 February 1903.
- 38.
Encyclopedia of the African Diaspora: Origins, Experiences, and Culture [edited by Carole Elizabeth Boyce Davies p. 928.].
- 39.
The Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, 10 December 1904. The article also notes that ‘the Chinese Ambassador likewise consented and congratulated the couple’.
- 40.
Sunday Post, 28 September 1919; 11 April 1926.
- 41.
World’s News, 18 April 1914, p. 9.
- 42.
Poor Law was the only form of assistance offered to unemployed black workers who refused repatriation. Jenkinson (2009: 195).
- 43.
Oral interview featuring Nora Glasgow, Black Film and Video Workshop in Wales with Butetown Community History Project, 1987. Accessed at Butetown History & Arts Centre.
- 44.
Nottingham Evening Post, 17 June 1919; Dundee Courier, 17 June 1919.
- 45.
Sunday Post, 11 April 1926.
- 46.
Gloucester Citizen, 27 August 1926.
- 47.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 13 June 1919.
- 48.
Interview featured in Struggles for Black Community: Tiger Bay is My Home, directed by Colin Prescod, Channel 4, 1984.
- 49.
Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 19 March 1921.
- 50.
Nottingham Evening Post, 10 June 1932.
- 51.
Sheffield Independent, 19 May 1908.
- 52.
Sunday Post, 11 April 1926.
- 53.
Reported in Nottingham Evening Post, 7 October 1920.
- 54.
Nottingham Evening Post, 7 October 1920.
- 55.
Hull Daily Mail, 16 July 1919.
- 56.
Hull Daily Mail, 28 July 1919.
- 57.
Hull Daily Mail, 13 October 1919.
- 58.
Until recently, it was believed that Archer was the first person of colour in Britain to be elected as a mayor; however, it appears that this achievement actually belongs to Allen Glaisyer Minns, originally from the Bahamas, who was elected as Mayor of the borough of Thetford, Norfolk in 1904 (EmilySarah 2015).
- 59.
The Times, 19 June 1919. Bland (2005) notes that although the 1903 Immorality Suppression Ordinance in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia outlawed sex outside marriage between white women and black men, no such legislation prohibited sex between white men and black women until 1927 and, even then, such transgressions were perceived as a far lesser crime.
- 60.
The Nottingham Evening Post, 3 February 1908.
- 61.
Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Guardian, 21 May 1938.
- 62.
The Graphic, 21 October 1911.
- 63.
Hull Daily Mail, 13 October 1919.
- 64.
The Original Chinatowners. BBC Video Nation http://www.bbc.co.uk/videonation/articles/l/london_theoriginal.shtml [date accessed 10.02.2013].
- 65.
Cited in Parker (2001: 191).
- 66.
Sheffield Independent, 22 August 1931.
- 67.
See memories of Monolulu posted online (Chepstow n.d.). Two of Monolulu’s children—Rupert and Peter ‘Prince’ Mackay—went on to become entertainers, touring as a song, dance and comedy act called the ‘Mckay Brothers’, accompanied by a Sinhalese woman named Romayne. See The Stage, 10 August 1967.
- 68.
Oral interview featuring Nora Glasgow, Black Film and Video Workshop in Wales with Butetown Community History Project, 1987. Accessed at Butetown History & Arts Centre.
- 69.
Interview with George Lee. Accessed at the Cruel Sea Reminiscence Project, Liverpool Record Office. Ref: 387 CSR/4/3.
- 70.
See ‘Strength of Our Mothers’ project, by National Black Arts Alliance, exploring the life experiences of white mothers in mixed relationships in Manchester spanning three generations of African migration 1940–2000; and ‘The Colour of Love A Celebration of Mixed Race Relationships in Nottinghamshire 1940s–1970s’, by St Anns Advice Centre, both funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, 2017.
- 71.
Evening Despatch, 4 March 1914.
- 72.
The Sunday Post, 28 September 1919.
- 73.
24 July 1900.
- 74.
Alfred Lawes, Millennium Memory Bank, 5 November 1998.
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Caballero, C., Aspinall, P.J. (2018). Fitting In and Standing Out: Lived Experiences of Everyday Interraciality. In: Mixed Race Britain in The Twentieth Century. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-33928-7_5
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