Sara Borneta’s African name was Omoba Aina, and she came from the Egbado (known today as Yewa) clan of the Yoruba people.
She was captured in 1848, at the age of five, when King Gezo of Dahomey (present day Benin) raided the city of Okeadon with the support of his European allies.
King Gezo captured the city of Okeadon, sacrificing many inhabitants and leading the rest away into slavery by selling most of them to his European masters.
Omoba Aina’s family including her father who was the chief of Okeadon was wiped out during the raid but she survived. As the daughter of chief , she was kept in captivity by King Gezo as a state prisoner, either to be presented to an important visitor, or to be sacrificed at the death of a minister or official to become his attendant in the next world.
In June 1850 Captain Forbes, on board the Bonetta, arrived in Dahomey on a mission to negotiate the end of slave trade with King Gezo who was sending many slaves to France.
As it was the norm, after the meeting the King and his visitor exchanged gifts. Among the gifts Gezo offered to Forbes – including a keg of rum, ten heads of cowries, and a ‘rich country cloth’ – was an unexpected one: a ‘captive girl’, Omoba Aina.
Forbes accepted the little girl as a present and brought her to England, naming her after himself and the ship. She was nolonger Omoba Aina but Forbes (the Captain) Bonetta (ship) . She was baptised Sarah and her full names became Sarah Bonetta Forbes.
She lived at first with Captain Forbes’s family, then, on 9 November, she was taken to Windsor Castle and received by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
She became the goddaughter of the Queen who saw her several times in the space of a few years. She was , a highly intelligent girl, and developed a particular talent for music.
An entry made by Queen Victoria in her journal on 11 January 1851 read :
“After luncheon Sally [Sarah] Bonita, the little African girl came with Mrs Phipps, & showed me some of her work. This is the 4th time I have seen the poor child, who is really an intelligent little thing.”
In August 1862 , Sarah married James Pinson Labulo Davies, a rich Nigerian businessman, 19th-century African merchant-sailor, naval officer, farmer, pioneer industrialist, statesman, and philanthropist.
Labulo Davies was born in Sierra Leone, then a British colony. His parents were recaptive Yoruba people liberated by the British West Africa Squadron from the Atlantic Slave Trade, and whose origins were in Abeokuta and Ogbomoso .
In 1848, he studied mathematics, Greek, biblical and English history, geography, music and Latin in Free Town before becoming a teacher. Later he joined the Royal West African Navy and was commissioned as a Lieutenant .
Ironically , Davies was an officer aboard HMS Bloodhound during the Bombardment of Lagos under the command of Commander Wilmot and Commodore Henry William Bruce and in which King Kosoko was ousted. He retired in 1852, and ventured into business.
Nevertheless, his marriage with Sarah resulted in three children Victoria Davies,
Arthur Davies , Stella Davies. Victoria Davies was named after Queen Victoria and just like her mother became her goddaughter.
Unfortunately Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis on 15 August 1880 in the city of Funchal, the capital of Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean. By then , her husbands business was already crumbling and they were struggling financially.
However, her memory, her husband Captain Labulo Davies erected an over-eight-foot granite obelisk-shaped monument at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he had started a cocoa farm. The inscription on the obelisk read:
“IN MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA
WIFE OF THE HON J.P.L. DAVIES WHO DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT MADEIRA AUGUST 15TH 1880
AGED 37 YEARS.”
Victoria Davies who was 17, was on her way to see her godmother Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle, when she received news about her mother’s date . She cried throughout.
An entry made by Queen Victoria in her diary on 15 August 1880 reads:
“After luncheon, saw the Judge Advocate, & then saw poor Victoria Davies, my black godchild, now 17 who heard this morning of the death of her dear mother at Madeira. The poor child was dreadfully upset & distressed, & only got the news, as she was starting to come here, so that she could not put off coming. Her father has failed in business, which aggravated her poor mother’s illness. A young brother & a little sister, only 5 were with their mother. Victoria seems a nice girl, very black & with very pronounced negro features. I shall give her an annuity. “
In 1890, Victoria went on to marry Dr John Randle a West African doctor who was active in politics in Lagos, in the colonial era. Born in Sierra Leone, Randle was one of the first West Africans to qualify as doctors in the United Kingdom, training at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland between 1884 and 1888
