Abbotsford Blog

There’s this public house in London. England’s National Archive says of it:

“In the 1780s, Asian seamen (Lascars), who had been employed by the East India Company to serve on ships bringing goods from India, were often left stranded in London and other ports without any means of support. By 1785, there were so many left destitute, begging and dying on the streets of London, that some philanthropists organised ‘Subscribers for the relief of the distressed Blacks’ to help them. The scope of the subscription was widened to include Black people from Africa and the Caribbean and became known as the ‘Committee for the Relief of the Black poor’. It was this body that launched a scheme to relocate as many of the capital’s Black and Asian poor to a settlement in Sierra Leone.

Whilst awaiting resettlement, Black and Asian people assembled every Saturday at two locations to receive their six pennies a day subscription. One place was the White Raven public house in Mile End, the other being the Yorkshire Stingo public house in Lisson Green, Paddington. It is possible that hundreds of the Black poor visited these premises every Saturday.”

Then there’s the grand 1860’s edifice on the corner of Hoddle and Langridge Streets in Abbotsford:

It has dormitory accommodation with a free evening meal thrown in, and a “host” who is a pilot and seems willing to take punters on joyrides for little profit.