Cesar Picton

Cesar Picton (c. 1755 Senegal? – 1836 Thames Ditton, Surrey) was presumably enslaved in Africa by the time he was about six years old. He was bought and brought to England by an English army officer who had been in Senegal, and in 1761 was "presented" as a servant to Sir John Phillips, a Baronet living in Norbiton near Kingston upon Thames in Surrey. He later became a wealthy coal merchant in Kingston.

Slave to servant

Sir John's journal recorded the arrival of Picton in the household, along with the gift of "a parakeet and a foreign duck". He was rapidly baptised by the Phillips, who were supporters of missionary work – he had quite likely been born into an Islamic family. Initially rigged out as an exotic page-boy, with a velvet turban (cost 10 shillings and sixpence) in the rococo fashion of the day, he became a favourite of the family, especially Lady Phillips. When Picton was about 33, Horace Walpole wrote in a letter of 1788: "I was in Kingston with the sisters of Lord Milford; they have a favourite black, who has been with them a great many years and is remarkably sensible".Lord Milford was the son of the Phillips', who were by then both dead. "Sensible" at this period meant "possessing sensibility", as opposed to the usual modern meaning of calm, down to earth, and the like. He had clearly achieved an unusual status in the household by this stage. Picton took his surname from Picton Castle, Pembrokeshire, the Phillips's country estate in Wales, which was then a significant site for mining coal.