As a disabled war veteran, Waters’ busking drew crowds and was portrayed in books, plays and paintings. But he died in wretched poverty and only 200 years on is his legacy being recognised
wo hundred years ago today, a one-legged Black pauper lay in the infirmary of the St Giles-in-the-Fields workhouse, slowly fading away. It was a sad end to the remarkable life of Billy Waters – the first African American musician to become celebrated in Britain.
On the bicentenary of his death, a measure of justice is coming at last to this pioneering Black Londoner. An Early Day Motion tabled in parliament by Bell Ribeiro-Addy, MP for Streatham, Growing up by New York’s waterfront, Billy Waters would have learned how to play fiddle and perform solo dances in dockside taverns and markets. Such agility and entertainment skills were valuable for any young sailor. As a wounded veteran in London he drew on them again to supplement a meagre pension, taking a pitch outside the Adelphi theatre on the Strand.
Waters embodied a spirit of lively defiance in dark times. In impoverished St Giles, nicknamed “The Holy Land” for its large Irish-Catholic population, he was a well-loved community musician. Waters and family lived in the notorious St Giles Rookery – a maze of narrow streets and courtyards with damp, dilapidated and horribly overcrowded houses, concealed passages and open sewers just a short distance from the British Museum.
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