Scipio Africanus (slave)

Scipio Africanus (1702 – 21 December 1720) was a slave born to unknown parents from West Africa. He was named after Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major, the third century BCE Roman general, famous for defeating the Carthaginian military leader Hannibal.

Very little is known of his life. He was the servant of Charles William Howard, 7th Earl of Suffolk, who in 1715 married Arabella Morse and lived in the "Great House" in Henbury, Bristol. It is not known how he was acquired, but he died there aged, according to his headstone, eighteen. His master and mistress would die two years later.

He is remembered because of the elaborate grave, consisting of painted headstone and footstone, in the churchyard of St Mary's in Henbury. The grave is grade II* listed. Both stones feature black cherubs and the footstone bears the unusual epitaph:

It is thought that 10,000 black slaves and servants were in Britain in the early 18th century, but this is one of the very few memorials to them. Curiously, there is no record of his burial in the church registers.

The author Eugene Byrne featured Scipio Africanus in his 2001 alternate history novel Things Unborn. In this novel people who had suffered an untimely death were reincarnated in an England recovering from a nuclear war; Scipio Africanus was a famous war hero and a Detective Inspector in the Metropolitan Police.

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