Rachael Baptist: The Career of a Black Singer in Ireland and England, 1750-73

Rachael Baptist, a black woman, was a celebrated singer in the pleasure gardens of Dublin in the 1750s. Subsequently, between 1757 and 1767, she claimed to have ‘performed in London, Bath, and the other principal parts of England, with universal applause’. Some of these English concerts can be documented from contemporary newspapers; but there is no definite record of her having performed in Bath or London. However there are a number of references to an unnamed black woman singer associated with Samuel Foote, the proprietor of the Haymarket Theatre in London in the 1760s, who was probably Rachael Baptist. She returned to Ireland in the autumn of 1767 and over the following winters gave a series of concerts in Irish provincial towns. Her career shows that a black woman could enjoy celebrity as a singer at the height of the slave trade and her colour not preclude the recognition of her talents.