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Tuesday, May 7, 2024

Lady Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843 – August 15, 1880) was a West African Egbado Omoba who was orphaned in inter-tribal warfare, sold into slavery, and in a remarkable twist of events, was liberated from slavery, and became a goddaughter to Queen Victoria. She was married to Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, the wealthy Victorian Lagos philanthropist.

Lady Sara Forbes Bonetta (1843 – August 15, 1880) was a West African Egbado Omoba who was orphaned in inter-tribal warfare, sold into slavery, and in a remarkable twist of events, was liberated from slavery, and became a goddaughter to Queen Victoria. She was married to Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, the wealthy Victorian Lagos philanthropist.

Originally named 'Aina', Sara was born in 1843 at Oke-Odan, an Egbado village. In 1848, Oke-Odan was raided by a Dahomean army; during the attack Sara lost her parents and ended up in the court of King Ghezo as a slave. Intended by her Dahomeyan captors to be a human sacrifice, she was rescued by Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy, who convinced King Ghezo of Dahomey to give her to Queen Victoria, "She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites," Forbes wrote later. He named her Sara Forbes Bonetta, Bonetta after his ship the HMS Bonetta. Victoria was impressed by the young princess' exceptional intelligence, and had Sara raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.

In 1851 Forbes Bonetta gained a long lasting cough, believed to be caused by the climate of Great Britain. She was sent to school in Africa in May of that year, at age eight, but was unhappy and returned to England in 1855 at the age of twelve. In January 1862 she was invited to and attended the wedding of the daughter of Queen Victoria, princess Alice.

She was later sanctioned by the Queen to marry Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies at St Nicholas' Church in Brighton in August, 1862, after a period which was to be spent in the town in preparation for the wedding. During her subsequent time in Brighton, she lived at 17 Clifton Hill in the Montpelier area.

Captain Davies was a Yoruba businessman of considerable wealth and the couple moved back to their native Africa after their wedding where they had 3 children: Victoria Davies (1863), Arthur Davies (1871), and Stella (1873). Sarah Bonetta continued to enjoy a close relationship with Queen Victoria such that she and Bishop Samuel Ajayi Crowther were the only Lagos indigenes under standing order by the Royal Navy to evacuate in the event of an uprising in Lagos.Victoria Davis was also goddaughter of the Queen of the British Empire. Victoria Matilda Davies married the successful Lagos doctor John K. Randle. A great many of both her and her daughter's descendants now live in England and Sierra Leone while a separate group of them, the aristocratic Randle family of Lagos, remains prominent in contemporary Nigeria.

Sarah Forbes Bonetta died on August 15 in 1880 of tuberculosis in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, a Portuegese Island. Captain Davies erected an over eight foot high granite obelisk-shaped monument in memory of Sarah Forbes Bonetta at Ijon in Western Lagos where Captain Davies started a cocoa farm.

Sara Forbes Bonetta photographed by Camille Silvy in 1862

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