In which there are Black Greenwich Pensioners
I've posted before about Black British naval veterans who retired as Greenwich Pensioners.
"Just as Chelsea Hospital was instituted for soldiers who had been injured or grown old in the service of the crown, Greenwich Hospital was built for seamen in 1695. Seamen contributed sixpence a month from their pay towards the upkeep of the hospital. Pensioners were admitted from 1705 and originally wore a uniform of dark gray with a blue lining and brass buttons. The colour of the uniforms changed to brown and then blue. Families of pensioners were not allowed to live with them in the Hospital so many lived in the Greenwich area. By the 19th century it was found preferable to pay out pensions and in 1869 the Hospital closed." (Source)
The pot calling the kettle black, circa 1800, by John Thurston, 1774-1822, is a mild caricature featuring two unnamed disabled Greenwich Pensioners, one of whom is a Black man. Sailors were accustomed to living on board ship at close quarters with colleagues from different backgrounds, although in 1777 the British navy restricted the number of Black seamen to four on each ship (but which didn't limit the number of non-seamen on board).
Thanks to research by one of his British descendants, we know more than usual about John Simmonds, a "mixed-race" man, who was born in Kingston, in Jamaica, in 1783, and became a Greenwich Pensioner. He was press-ganged into Royal Navy at 20 years old, became a landsman (a rank above pressed men but below ordinary seamen) on HMS Conqueror and served at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. He remained on Conqueror as ordinary seaman until 1812, then served on HMS Barnham (my source says "Barnham" but might mean HMS Barham) and HMS Variable as able seaman, a yeoman of the sheets, and a quartermaster, until he was invalided out as a Greenwich Pensioner. He returned to sea on HMS Forte from 1826-8. John Simmonds married Ann Fouch and moved to Mansfield in Nottinghamshire where they worked as hawkers (where we find one Black British person in history there are usually more people with similar histories). The Simmonds family had four children, the first in 1831 and the last in 1844. John Simmonds received the Trafalgar medal in 1846. He died at the age of 71 and is buried in Mansfield.
The United Services, 1845, by Andrew Morton, shows Greenwich Pensioner John Deman, who served with Nelson in the West Indies, on the right side of the group of men, wearing a red cap and leaning companionably on a colleague's chair.
"John Deman was born in the West Indies around 1774 and as a boy, aged about 13, joined the Navy travelling to England where he served on various ships in Admiral Lord Nelson’s fleet. There is no record of John Deman in any of the pay books or logs for the ships at the Battle of Trafalgar therefore we can assume he was injured at one of Nelson’s earlier battles, perhaps at the Battle of the Nile.
The research hasn’t uncovered exactly how he was injured but it must have resulted in him being unfit for active duty for he entered the Greenwich Hospital for Seaman around the turn of the century.
Andrew Morton’s painting depicts a meeting of army and navy veterans viewing the Naval Gallery paintings (the Painted Hall at the ORNC was once the ‘National Gallery of Naval Art’ before the NMM opened in 1937). To keep themselves occupied Pensioners often gave tours of the Painted Hall and in this painting John Deman, along with the other naval Pensioners, is shown entertaining the army veterans.
John Deman’s death was recorded in 1847, two years after Andrew Morton’s painting was displayed at the Royal Academy." (Source)
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