REMEMBERING BLACK LIVES

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: september 2020 :: RMTnews 22 For the past 15 years RMT regional organiser Barry West has tended for the graves of three African slaves who are buried in Cornwall. Barry has been regularly checking the graves of Evaristo Muchovela, Philip Scipio and Joseph Emidy to ensure that age has not weathered the headstones. “I’ve laid flowers at all three locations over time in remembrance and to help to bring attention to their presence so that others can be drawn to them and hopefully read the inscriptions. “I have for many years been wanting to find out more about them, their journeys their lives and there is still more to do and to uncover or understand,” he said. While Joseph Emidy is renowned for finding fame as the leader of Truro Philharmonic Society and celebrated composer, the other men aren’t so well known. EVARISTO MUCHOVELA In 1838, a miner Thomas Johns from the Cornish village of Porkellis was working in Rio de Janeiro when he bought a seven-year-old slave boy, Evaristo Muchovela, originally from Mozambique. However, the papers at the time of his death recorded that Evaristo was a native of Guinea, which is over 3,000 miles away. When illness drove Johns home in 1860, he offered Evaristo the choice of staying in Brazil as a free man or coming to Cornwall to live with him as a paid servant. He chose to come to Cornwall but soon afterwards, in January 1861, Johns died of tuberculosis. Alone in a foreign country he worked for cabinetmaker William Wales in Redruth, who considered his apprentice a first-class employee. There are records of him being a "well- known French Polisher”. Just seven years later, Evaristo also succumbed to tuberculosis and was buried in his former master’s grave in Wendron. The inscription reads: Evarista Muchovela Born in Mozambique South Africa Died at Redruth February 19th 1868 Aged 38 Years Here lie the master and the slave Side by side within one grave distinction’s lost and caste is o’er, the slave is now a slave no more. PHILIP SCIPIO Philip Scipio was a servant of African origin, buried in the parish of Werrington, near Launceston. The memorial in Werrington had been illegible and largely forgotten for the past ten to 15 years and no doubt for as long as anyone can remember. Therefore Barry set about cleaning it and recording the details that were inscribed and said that now would be a fitting time to share it. The original site of the parish church of St Martin was in Werrington Park but it was rebuilt in 1742 on a new site where it sits today with many original headstones. For many years Philip’s memorial stone was used as a paving stone. It has since been set in the wall of the church as a more fitting location to remember the young man. REMEMBERING BLACK LIVES Barry West has researched the lives of three nineteenth century black men buried in Cornwall