Ignatius Sancho -  Entrepreneur  

Ignatius Sancho was born around 1729 on a slave ship crossing the Atlantic. His mother died shortly after arriving in the Caribbean, and his father is believed to have died by suicide rather than live as a slave.

By age two, Sancho was brought to England and placed in the care of three sisters in Greenwich, London. He wasn’t treated as a child, but as property whose role was to serve them. John Montagu the 2nd Duke of Montagu was struck by Sancho’s intellect when he visited the sisters and tried to encourage his learning. Later Sancho would run away from the sisters to go and work for the Montagu family, eventually becoming their

valet and then their steward. Sancho had access to education which he took full advantage of. He took up writing, in fact he wrote a lot, about art, politics, literature, and the horrors of slavery. Sancho’s writings, The Letters of the Late Ignatius Sancho, an African, were published two years after his death in 1782.

Sancho went on to become one of Britain’s first Black retailers, he owned a grocery shop in Westminster in the 1700s. He wasn’t just a businessman and writer, he was also a musician and an abolitionist who turned his shop into a hub for progressive thinkers.

The shop, which Sancho owned, was located at 19 Charles Street in Westminster (now King Charles Street) just a stone’s throw from Parliament. Property ownership gave Sancho voting rights, which was unheard of for a Black man in the 1700s. 

Sancho became the first known Black person to vote in British general elections. He voted twice, once in 1774 and again in 1780.