Dido’s Mother: Maria Bell

Dido Elizabeth Belle was the illegitimate daughter of Sir John Lindsay (1737–88), an officer in the Royal Navy, and an African woman named Maria Bell(e). We do not know where or how Maria and Lindsay first met, but during 1760 his ship the HMS Trent, was sailing around the coasts of Senegal and the Caribbean.

The first record of Maria is on Dido’s baptism entry of 1766, at St George’s Church, Bloomsbury, in which Maria Bell is noted as the mother, and Dido Elizabeth is five years old. Lindsay is not recorded as the father, but he probably supported Maria over the next ten years, or at least stayed in contact, as in 1774, Maria travelled from England to Pensacola, America, to take possession of a plot of land gifted to her by Lindsay, and where she was to build a home.

In the Pensacola property record, Maria is referred to as previously being enslaved: ‘a Negroe Woman of Pensacola in America but now of London afore and made free’. The price to confirm her freedom is dated 22 August  1774, the manumission transaction for ‘the sum of two hundred Spanish milled dollars ... paid by Maria Belle a Negro Woman Slave about twenty eight years of age’. As Dido had been born in 1761, this would place Maria as a young mother of around 15 years of age at the time of Dido’s birth. The spelling of Bell had now become Belle, which is consistent with all later written records that we have for Dido. 

Life at Kenwood

It was not unheard of for a powerful aristocrat to be the legal guardian to an illegitimate relation. But it was extremely unusual at this time for a mixed-heritage child – who had been born to a formerly enslaved mother – to be raised not as a servant, but as part of an aristocratic British family.

Dido’s exact position within Lord Mansfield’s household is unclear, but the evidence suggests that she was brought up as a lady alongside her cousin Elizabeth Murray. We know that she was taught to read, write, play music and was graceful and at ease in the presence of invited guests. She also received an annual allowance. In John Lindsay’s obituary, which confirmed him as Dido’s father, the London Chronicle noted that ‘[her] amiable disposition and accomplishments have gained her the highest respect from all his Lordship’s relations and visitants’.

Dido also supervised Kenwood’s dairy and poultry yard, a common hobby for genteel women at the time. Her daily activities however would have changed on the death of Lady Mansfield in 1784, and on the marriage in 1785 of her cousin Elizabeth. Dido remained at Kenwood without the close companion with whom she had grown up. Now a young woman in her twenties, Dido would have become increasingly involved in the care of Lord Mansfield in his old age, and in turn, he treated with her with affection. Dido’s health and comfort were also cared for, her birthday remembered in June each year with a gift of 5 guineas.

Lord Mansfield and Slavery

Dido lived at a time when the transatlantic slave trade was at its height, and Britain’s economic prosperity relied on slave labour in the Caribbean and Britain’s American colonies. However, public opinion about the practice was changing.

From 1756 to 1788 Dido’s great-uncle Lord Mansfield was Lord Chief Justice, the most powerful judge in England. He presided over a number of court cases that examined the legality of the slave trade. In the most significant of these, the case of James Somerset (1772), Lord Mansfield ruled that slavers could not forcibly send any slaves in England out of the country.

We don’t know whether his affection for Dido influenced Lord Mansfield’s opinions on the slave trade. In his summing up at the trial in 1772 he is recorded as describing slavery as ‘odious’, but as Lord Chief Justice he had to adhere to a strict reading of the law. While the Somerset case was a significant point along the road to abolition, it didn’t end the slave trade. Mansfield was clearly aware of this and in his will of 1782 he made sure to protect his niece’s rights, stating that Dido was a free woman.

It would be another 35 years after the Somerset case before the transatlantic slave trade was abolished, and a further 26 years after that before the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 finally put an end to the practice across the British Empire.