Good Stuff : visiting beautiful places in London & seeing the entertainments & fireworks

Bad Stuff : Being taken away from his home and family in Africa and sold as a slave.

Documents Hogarth painting from the series " Marriage a la Mode " 1745, showing a Black servant serving chocolate and a Black child page.

Runaway advertisement from a London newspaper for the boy Africa 1678.

Africa was a uniformed servant in a London house at a time when it was very fashionable to have a young Black slave as a servant. We know he ran away because his description was in the London paper. Whether he was recaptured we do not know.

Good stuff : his dog, reading, the beautiful countryside of Australia

Bad stuff : very hot sun, being far from his family, feeling lonely at times

Documents . Ragged School printed newsletter with letters home from Australia, modern photo of sheep in Australia, map of 1825 & nineteenth century engraving of boy shepherd.

Charlie was a young man living in London in the 1840s. As his family were very poor his chances of a good job and life in London were not good. He won a prize to live in Australia as a shepherd. To read his letter home he seems to have found the place lovely although he missed his family at home.

Good stuff : working in an art studio with lots of other girls, being with her brothers,

Bad stuff: her old job working in a school

Documents: painting of girls working in the pottery, Florence's signature, modern photo of what is left of the Victorian pottery works in Black Prince Road by the river in Lambeth.

Florence was from quite an educated family, her dad & brothers all worked as clerks in banks or businesses. She worked long hours in her job at the pottery but conditions there were good for that time in history. Later she got married and had children and moved away to leafier Clapham with her husband and family.

Good stuff : Playing with her little niece next door . Going to the theatre with Uncle Harry who works there.

Bad stuff : English food (not fresh enough) & hats to make with lots of fiddly bits, feeling cold & the dirty atmosphere of London town.

Documents. The 1901 census record for Maria's family and her in-laws when they were living in Lambeth, theatre programme for the 1900 panto at Kennington Theatre where Maria's English uncle may have worked,Betty Blythe theatrical performer in Brixton in 1905.

Maria lived in Lambeth for a few years around 1900. She was Portuguese. We found her living, with her mum and other sisters next door to an English family in the census of 1901. Looking very carefully we realized that her brother had married the English daughter of the family next door. Then it seems all the rest of the family came to live in England for a few years.

Mum from the Mediterranean, dad from Ghana, living in Lambeth with his aunt & foster family

Good stuff : playing with his brothers, going camping & to the seaside, playing in the school football team

Bad stuff : the WWII bombing raids round the corner from home in the 1940s

Documents. Fry's Cocoa advertisement from the 1920s ( Ronnie's dad had cocoa farms in Ghana all his life ), seaside photo with Ronnie in the middle with friends, Ronnie as a young dad with his wife & children in the 1950s. Modern portraits of Ronnie's grandchildren with instruments.

Ronnie was born and bred in Lambeth, a real London boy, but like many kids today his family had come from other parts of the world. Later on in his life he met up with his dad who had been a travelling musician in London in the 1920s where he met Ronnie's mum.

Ronnie's grandsons 2008

Good stuff : collecting shrapnel from fallen bombs, playing, getting sent home from the evacuation by Christmas.

Bad stuff : Being sent to West Worthing with a label round his neck in the evacuation, knowing no one & having no brothers and sisters to go with.

Documents ; Bernie playing in his tin helmet in the rockery, photo of bomb damage in Norwood, relative on motor bike

Bernie was a boy in Lambeth during the Second World War. Once he had come home from the evacuation early in the war he seems to have quite an adventurous time riding on fire trucks, playing soldiers in the rockery and collecting mementos from the bombing. He also had sad moments when he found out at school that children he knew had died in the nightly blitz bombing that took place over London.

Good stuff : In Pakistan : playing with all her cousins in their family compound in the village. In Newcastle, England : watching the Blaydon Races parade from the roof of the house. Mus was not allowed to go to the parade so she sneaked out of the window and sat watching all the excitement from the roof of her house.

"I can still remember the noise of the drums and the rest of the band and seeing giant floats go by. People were cheering non stop."

Bad stuff : No dolls. When her teacher gave her an old doll she had to hide it as her father was a strict Muslim who did not allow them to have anything that was a representation of a living thing in the house. Mus's mother got round that by teaching her to knit and sew clothes using the doll.

Waving goodbye to her grandfather as they boarded the aeroplane for England.

"I remember my Grandad actually coming to the steps of the plane. It was only at this point that I realised that I would not be seeing him, my cousins and my uncles again, probably for a long time."

Mus came to Newcastle in England at the age of 7 as her father who was a scholar wanted to settle here. Her early life in Pakistan was idyllic, as the family had their own compound in the village, where she lived with her grandfather, mum and cousins. Life in England was very different.

Good stuff : Going to dances with her sisters, seeing the famous places in London like Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace.

Bad stuff : Mum saying goodbye when she left Jamaica and came to work in England.

Saying goodbye to her Gran in the West Indies when she went to live with her mum and little sisters in England several years later.

Violet's story is one common to many families who came to live in Britain after World War II. Some of these adults had been in the Armed Forces in Britain during the war. Afterwards, in the 1950s, with bad harvests in the Caribbean and with the promise of good jobs in England in the new National Health Service and on the railways many people returned. Bad weather in London, discrimination and the lack of good housing as well as the separation of families, with older children often having to stay behind, made the experience of migration difficult and far from the dream many had expected.

Passport photo of unknown man 1950s/1960s

Good stuff : Looking forward to new things and meeting new people and having new experiences.

Bad stuff : Being homesick for everything, his camels,the lovely lovely beaches of the Red Sea, and missing his mum.

Documents. Sayid with his favourite camel, map of Somalia , Photo from Tiger Bay Swansea,South Wales of a wedding in 1925 with Somali groom and mixed race bride with their families and friends.

Sayid left Somalia to stay with his brother in Finland in the 1990s but when the war broke out in his homeland he applied for asylum. He misses so many things about his home country but has enjoyed meeting new people and doing new things in Britain. He says that parts of London are just like being in an African village." You can get anything !"