Talk:Sarah Forbes Bonetta

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN ESSAY AND A BIOGRAPHICAL PIECE?

I dont see why this "company" thinks thaT there is a difference between this piece and the one on Queen Elizabeth II?

The two are worlds apart in writing style. This had a lot of unsource material that read like "lore". QEII is a straight biographical piece that reads like it was professionally written. Akradecki 02:27, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Edit

I've pared this down quite a bit, to only the material that I could find verification for. The rest can be restored if there are sources to support it. Given the dates when this happened, I highly doubt that there's sufficient historical records to provide a record of actual conversations of the tribal chiefs. Akradecki 02:09, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Move

I've moved the article per Wikipedia policy to the most common name. No sources hyphenate her name, she's not referred to as a Princess, and her name almost never includes Davis. Sara Forbes Bonetta is how all the refs refer to her, so it is the best name for this article. Akradecki 02:57, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

Royal status

Given that, per every source I could find, little is known about her parentage, how was it established that she was a "Princess" (or whatever the equivalent would have been)? Surely the identity of her parents would be the integral factor in determining her status? From the narrative given, her parents died in the invasion of Oke-Odan, and she ended up in the court of Ghezo as a "young child slave", but from whom did these details come? English Heritage - https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/osborne/history-and-stories/sarah-forbes-bonetta/ - gives "The child, whose name was Omoba Aina, was from the Egbado (known today as Yewa) clan of the Yoruba people. She had been captured two years earlier when Gezo’s army attacked her village, Oke-Odan. Her parents were killed during the raid. It is not clear whether Gezo offered the child freely or whether Forbes bargained for her, but she clearly impressed him. Forbes believed that the fact that Gezo had held her for two years and not sold her to slave traders meant she was likely to be of high status. He also feared (with reason, as Gezo was known to sacrifice high-status captives) that she was destined to be offered as a human sacrifice." If Forbes's "belief", however plausible it might be, was the deciding factor in proclaiming the girl a "princess", it stands to reason that this might well not be based in actual fact. The fact that her name is given as "Omoba" Aina, indicating the status of "child of a monarch" per the Wikipedia article, is of course corroborative, but again, where did this fact come from? Did the five-year-old state this to be her name after her capture? Did Forbes, knowing/ learning the word "Omoba", add it to her given name to indicate what he believed to be her status? Are there no records of this royal (albeit in fact probably more accurately "chiefly" family) that would allow identification of her parentage/ ancestry?

Featured picture scheduled for POTD

Hello! This is to let editors know that File:James Pinson Labulo Davies and Sara Forbes Bonetta.jpg, a featured picture used in this article, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for October 1, 2025. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2025-10-01. For the greater benefit of readers, any potential improvements or maintenance that could benefit the quality of this article should be done before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page. Start of (the British) Black History Month If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 8.8% of all FPs.} 01:38, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Sarah Forbes Bonetta (c. 1843 – 1880), born Aina or Ina, was an African slave who later became a ward and goddaughter of Queen Victoria. Believed to be a titled member of the Yewa, a clan of the West African Yoruba people, she was orphaned as a child during a war with the nearby kingdom of Dahomey and was later enslaved by Ghezo, the king of Dahomey. She was then given as a "gift" to Captain Frederick E. Forbes of the Royal Navy and was taken to England, where she became a goddaughter of Queen Victoria. On Victoria's orders, Bonetta married Captain James Pinson Labulo Davies, a wealthy Lagos philanthropist, in 1862. The couple moved back to Africa and had three children, including Lagos socialite Victoria Davies Randle. Bonetta died aged 37 on the Portuguese island of Madeira. This formal photograph, taken by the French photographer Camille Silvy in 1862, shows Bonetta and Davies at around the time of their marriage.

Photograph credit: Camille Silvy; restored by Adam Cuerden

Recently featured:

• Child labor in the United States
• Tawny-bellied hermit
• Machu Picchu

Not written objectively

The sections "Captain Forbes at Dahomey" and "Queen Victoria" need to be reworked to be far more objective and (where possible) source-neutral. Right now it reads like a puff piece for Forbes and sounds as if it's using his own words as historical fact.

For example, calling Aina "so tiny, so still" and the comparison that he, the civilized British man, would never think of harming a child, whereas the savage African found it "extremely easy" to kill her. The story of her panicking because of a sword is extremely suspect as well (the implication that she, being from Africa, had never seen artwork and thought it was a real person, and that the only thing swords were used for in Africa was beheading helpless people, whereas British society was far more civilized). ~2026-11457-16 (talk) 04:00, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. These sections need shortening, making more neutral and comparing to the existing sources. I can't make these changes at the moment, but will try to come back to it in a week or so, if no-one else has before then. Thanks for bringing this up. Tacyarg (talk) 05:45, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

It's been two months since this was raised and the section remains unchanged. Given the extent of the neutrality and sourcing issues, I'd suggest removal is the most practical solution rather than attempting to salvage compromised information. Barring objections, I'll proceed with removing the material in a day or two. Winter.Lance (talk) 22:19, 23 April 2026 (UTC)

If you think it should be rewritten, rewrite it. Don't blame others for your laziness. DuncanHill (talk) 22:56, 23 April 2026 (UTC)