Be sure to join Odile and Liberty in the upcoming Black history 365 talk at Fulham Palace on 12 November 2025.
Odile Jordan and Liberty Collard share about their work on the Switching the Lens (StL) database, which brings together baptism, marriage and burial records for African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous heritage Londoners from Anglican parish churches across Greater London between 1560 and 1860.
Written by Odile Jordan and Liberty Collard
Over the past twenty years, staff and volunteers at The London Archives have worked to recover these previously scattered and un-transcribed records, making them accessible to researchers and the public for the first time. The StL database presents exciting opportunities to explore the diverse experiences of people of colour in historic London. With over 3,300 entries, it represents one of the largest collections of records available for examining London’s multiracial past between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Though the information recorded varies considerably across parishes and periods, the database enables researchers to identify patterns in documented personal characteristics – including age, gender, occupation, and social connections such as family members, godparents, and employers.
For researchers interested in spatial analysis, the database provides three types of locational information. First, each record is linked to the parish church where the baptism, marriage, or burial took place. The heat map below demonstrates how these records can be visualised to reveal patterns of spatial distribution across the city. The more intense the colour surrounding each church symbol, the greater the number of people of colour documented in that parish’s records. Due to the nature of the source material, heat maps do not provide a complete reconstruction of London’s multiracial population, but rather a partial representation that illuminates the enduring connections between people and place over time. The map reveals a diverse presence across all neighbourhoods in central London, in varying numbers, throughout the period from 1560 to 1860.
Second, several hundred records also include street addresses, showing where people of colour lived in the city. Mapping these addresses allows us to use spatial analysis as more than just visualisations, but as research tools for understanding what religious ceremonies meant to people of colour in the past. This reveals not simply who was where and when, but why they made particular choices.
The average age of Black baptisms during the early modern period was in the mid-twenties, while most white Londoners were baptised within days of birth due to high infant mortality rates. Why did Black Londoners have adult baptisms? By the end of the eighteenth century, baptism was largely equated with freedom. Many Black people arrived in London enslaved during the early modern period, so baptism may have offered a route to establish belonging in the city or provided institutional recognition of their status.
Spatial analysis adds nuance to this understanding. By measuring the distance between individuals’ home addresses and their parish churches, we can ask more specific questions. Were Black people baptised in their local parish as a way to gain acceptance in their neighbourhoods, or for practical reasons such as eligibility for poor relief (which often required proof of local settlement)? Or did they travel further from home to specific churches because of their religious practices or the ‘tolerant’ reputation of particular congregations or priests?
Finally, the database records places of origin for many individuals, enabling us to trace historic movements into London. StL demonstrates that London was a global city during this period, with migration occurring from every corner of the world. This knowledge helps us to frame and celebrate the city’s diversity today. In our talk on 12 November, we will present a range of maps using the StL records to demonstrate how spatial analysis can offer new insights into ongoing debates in the field surrounding community, identity, social status, and belonging.
As much as this data enables exciting research opportunities, however, ,it also requires careful interrogation. We need to ask questions about both the structure of the database – what’s included and excluded, how volunteers made categorisation decisions, which parishes’ records were digitised and which weren’t – and the content of the records themselves. Who were the parish clerks who wrote these entries? What did they choose to record, and what did they leave out? The database reflects not just historical realities but also a multi-faceted interpretative challenge. The people recorded in the records are viewed through a historically imperial, Anglican lens; today’s archivists are tasked with organising that information in a way that makes sense in the 21st century; and researchers like us are trying to piece together human-centered and accurate diasporic narratives from these fragments for a diverse future readership.
The StL database is not only an invaluable source for those seeking further insight into London’s general historical diversity, it offers a great starting point for research into specific demographics as well. Among its thousands of entries, for example, 274 baptisms and burials from 1561 to 1839 document people that are identified as Asian. These records crucially make visible communities that many canonical histories of London often overlook, offering an invaluable starting point for understanding the Asian and Muslim presence in the city across nearly three centuries.
During their talk, Odile will first delve into three key questions that emerge from working with this section of the broader dataset. First, what do the racial descriptors actually tell us? Entries describe people as ‘Asian,’ ‘Lascar,’ ‘Malay,’ ‘Black Asian,’ or simply ‘Black’ when referring to Indian individuals. These terms seemingly reveal more about the Victorian racial consciousness than about the recorded people themselves and understanding that consciousness is crucial if we want to say anything meaningful about the diverse Asian communities living in 19th-century London.
Second, what role did religion play? Some records explicitly note Christian conversion, like in this 1821 baptism of William Thompson: ‘This person was baptized & embraced the Christian religion.’ Others show accommodation without conversion, like Boaza Bon Abdallah’s 1803 burial: ‘Being a Mahometan he was only deposited in the ground, without the service.’ When was Christian ceremony required, and when was it optional?
Third, what explains the large number of adult baptisms among the Asian community? What motivated these decisions, as contrasted with Black African or Caribbean people discussed above? For other communities of colour, baptism likely posed a different opportunity, perhaps improved access to poor relief, employment, or other institutional support?
These questions don’t have simple answers, and that’s the point. The Switching the Lens database is invaluable precisely because it raises as many questions as it answers; questions that productively mirror some of the issues that modern Britain grapples with today. The research possibilities, however, are almost endless. Every entry in Switching the Lens is both an answer about who was present in London, and a question about how they navigated and shaped the city around them. In our talk on 12 November, we will examine the database more closely, presenting individual and collective case studies that open up these conversations. Together, we will reflect on many of the questions posed here, thinking about both the challenges and possibilities of using StL and spatial analysis to deepen our understanding of Black British history.
About the speakers
Odile Jordan is a second-year History PhD Student at Northeastern University London. She uses a mix of archival research, digital technologies and creative practices to rediscover the Asian migrant presence in 19th century London. Odile is a research assistant on the Mapping Black London project at Northeastern and the published author of poetry and short fiction.
Liberty Collard is a third-year History PhD student at Northeastern University London, using digital technologies to rediscover and recenter the Black African presence in London in the long eighteenth century. Liberty is a research assistant on the Mapping Black London project at Northeastern and the AHRC Countertenor project.