Primrose
Title
Primrose The celebrated piebald boy, a native of the West Indies; publicly [sic] shewn in London 1789
Description
Full-length portrait of John Richardson Primrose Bobey, a young Black man with the pigmentation disorder vitiligo, born enslaved in Jamaica, and inspected and exhibited as a specimen of science throughout England. Shows the young man standing on a shoreline. He stands with palm trees in the distance. He is dressed in a loincloth knotted on his left hip and adorned with tassels. White patches are visible on his legs, torso, and down the center of his head. In his right hand, he holds up a captioned portrait broadside of himself as a boy and points to it with his left hand bent at the elbow and from in front of his waist. The broadside depicts the very young Bobey with primarily white skin above text reading "A Child born at Gros Islet, in the Island of St. Lucia, of Black Parents, Taken from a model of the infant colored from nature," and at the museum of T. Pole, Surgeon, Grace Church, in London." In adulthood in London, Bobey advocated for his freedom from enslavement and was a proprietor of a menagerie and a member of several societies, including the Free Masons., Title from item., Manuscript note on recto: Presented T. Pole Surgeon, London, to the Library of Philadelphia., Publication information inferred from broadside illustrated in image and address of London publishers Wm. Darton & Jos. Harvey., Noted in LCP Minutes, v. 3, p. 230-231., Biographies of sitter in Karl Pearson, A monograph on Albinism (London: Cambridge University Press, 1911-1913) and William Granger, The new wonderful museum, and extraordinary magazine: ... (London: Printed for R.S. Kirby, 1804), v. 2, p. 711-714., Pole, a Philadelphia-born Quaker physician, was also an artist who illustrated his own text "An Anatomical Instructor, an Illustration of the Modern and Most Approved Methods of Preparing and Preserving the Different Parts of the Human Body, and of Quadrupeds, by Injection, Corrosion, ... (London, 1790)., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., Descripton revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Gift of Thomas Pole, 1790., RVCDC
Date
[ca. 1789]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | PRINT. *portrait prints - Primrose [901.F.27]
Remarks on the slave trade [graphic].
Title
Remarks on the slave trade
Description
Image shows the plan of an African slave ship. From left to right, the ship is divided into the following compartments: men's room, boy's room, women's room, and girl's room. It also includes two small store rooms. Hundreds of human figures illustrate the extent to which the slaves were crowded on board, and suggest the conditions under which they made the passage., Illustration for Remarks on the Slave Trade, Extracted from the American Museum, for May, 1789. And published by order of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, &c. (Philadelphia: s.n., 1789)., A caption at the head of the engraving reads: "Plan of an African ship's lower deck, with Negroes, in the proportion of not quite one to a ton.", Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Anti-Slavery Movement Imagery.
Date
[1789]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Am 1789 Rem 8645.F broadside, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2682