Barber, Francis, 1742 or 1743-1801

Francis Barber (c. 1742/3 – 13 January 1801), whose original name was Quashey (a common name for men of Coromantee origin), was the Jamaican manservant of lexicographer Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson's death in 1784. Barber was born enslaved in Jamaica on a sugarcane plantation belonging to the Bathurst family.

At the age of about 15, he was brought to England by his owner, Colonel Richard Bathhurst, whose son, also called Richard, was a close friend of Samuel Johnson. Barber was sent to school in Yorkshire. Johnson's wife Elizabeth died in 1752, plunging Johnson into a depression that Barber later vividly described to James Boswell. The Bathursts sent Barber to Johnson as a valet, arriving two weeks after her death. Although the legal validity of slavery in England was ambiguous at this time, when the elder Bathurst died two years later he gave Barber his freedom in his will, with a small legacy of £12 (equivalent to £2,000 in 2019).

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