“JAMES DONOVAN and William Smith, the latter a negro, were charged with fighting in Parkgate on Sunday night,” reported the Darlington & Stockton Times 150 years ago this month in its weekly court round-up of villains who had appeared before Darlington magistrates.
It is only a paragraph but it is a very revealing paragraph.
Only in June, the 75th anniversary was commemorated of the arrival of the Windrush, the first vessel bringing settlers from the Caribbean to this country, and the first busload of black people from that generation is believed to have arrived in Darlington in 1956.
The first of the Windrush generation arrive at Darlington's Bank Top station in June 1956
But black people, although very rare, were not unknown in this area before then.
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In the village of Barton, near Scotch Corner, the vicar, the Reverend William Jackson, had a boarding school which had pupils who had been born on slave plantations but – perhaps because their father was the plantation owner – had been sent to England for education. On January 5, 1747, Joseph Cooke, a "negro from Jamaica" was baptised at the church, and in 1750, Francis Barber, eight, also came for a year from Jamaica – he went on to become the personal assistant of Samuel Johnson, the compiler of the first dictionary.
In the early 1770s, John Yorke of Richmond married Elizabeth Campbell, whose family had Caribbean slave estates, and she came with two black houseboys. In 1772, when owning slaves in Britain became illegal, they were given their freedom. One, named Richmond, went to work for the curate of Muker, and the other, named York, went to work for the Hutton family of Marske Hall in Swaledale. In 1800, he married Hannah Barker of Ravensworth, and they had eight children.
On their birth certificates, their father was named as “John York the African”, and he became well known in the area.
Darlington’s first black inhabitant is often said to have been Tommy Crawford, who had escaped slavery by joining the Queen’s Dragoon Guards – his surname was given to him by the officer who arranged for him to sign-up.
Around 1815, his period of service finished when the Guards were stationed in Darlington and he was pensioned off, settling in Bradley’s Yard, which was between Church Row and Church Lane in the town centre.
He was universally known as “Black Tommy”, and he died in 1830.
“Tommy was an inoffensive, industrious man, and increased his means of maintenance by hard work as a bricklayer’s labourer,” said a local book published in 1862. “The death of his son, a fine tawny boy, at the age of 13 years, in 1830, sadly distressed the old soldier, and he did not long survive his loss.”
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And so we come to the scrap in Parkgate that took place late in July 1873 when a constable saw the two men fighting. The D&S Times’s reporting is interesting because in any story it published about misbehaving Irish immigrants to the Durham coalfield, it always highlighted in the headline where they were from, yet this court case is reported simply under the headline “Fighting”.
It then says explains that a female witness told the court that another black man had been involved in the fight and that William Smith was acting as a peacemaker – “he was endeavouring to pacify the combatants” – when James Donovan struck him in the face. He “returned the blow in self-defence”, said the paper.
The short paragraph concludes: “The case against Smith was dismissed, and Donovan was fined 10s and costs.”
So from this we can learn that in 1873, there were several black people in Darlington and the report does not suggest that their presence is remarkable or unusual, and we can see that the magistrates believed William’s defence that he was the good guy and let him go and found the white man guilty.
It is a shame that society and the legal system hasn’t always been so scrupulously fair in the 150 years since.
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