Kenwood House

The fourth day was the most anticipated day of mine for the visit of Kenwood House. Prior to the trip to London, I watched the movie "Belle", which was inspired by the painting of Dido Elizabeth Belle beside her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray at Kenwood House. This painting is exceptional because unlike other paintings of high-class white people with Africans, Dido is portrayed on an equal eye-line with her white cousin. 

Dido is a daughter of an enslaved African woman and a British Royal Navy officer, who was brought up under the care of her uncle, William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield. Lord Mansfield is known as the most powerful British jurist of the century with his decisions that put England on the path to abolition of slavery and the slave trade, and it is believed that Dido played an important role in his decisions. The film is set at a time of the Zong massacre, where the owner of the slave trade ship Zong filed an insurance claim for their loss of "properties", or the slaves, thrown overboard partly due to the lack of drinking water but mostly due to the condition of slaves as their health got worse from disease and malnutrition, which would have brought their price down. By cashing in on the insurance on the lost "properties" on the ship, the owners were hoping to make more profit. Lord Mansfield ruled against the ship owners, making the deliberate killing of slaves illegal and the Zong case a powerful symbol of the abolitionist movement.

I particularly love this unbelievable story of Dido. She was treated equally with other Lord Mansfield's family members in most situations, except for those involving guests as it was already very rare for an African woman to be a free gentlewoman and could have created a scandal. It is hard to imagine her life in such high-class household as a free woman, surrounded by African slaves who resemble her yet on the side of the white people in the house. The mindset the family of Lord Mansfield had is also incredible in such time period.