Description
At the end of 1759’s Battle of Ticonderoga, in which the British soldier Roger Townshend was killed, Townshend’s elder brother George, a military officer, brought home an eleven-year-old Odawa boy as a war captive. The boy lived in Townshend’s home in Craven Street, where he was used as a “diversion” for Townshend’s guests, who included luminaries such as the poet Thomas Gray, the designer Robert Adam, and the architect John Soane. Adam designed a monument to Roger Townshend that included two human figures based on the Odawa boy’s body; that monument still stands in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. What happened to the unnamed boy is not known.
Bibliographic sources
Thrush, Indigenous London, 99-102.