The Boys from Malagasey

By Rosie Jones | Published in History Today Volume: 57 Issue: 1 2007

In the first of a number of articles marking the bicentenary of the bill of March 1807 to abolish the slave trade, Rosie Llewellyn-Jones tells the remarkable story of the boys from Madagascar who were sent to England to be educated in the 1820s as part of an agreement with the British to develop the country and end Madagascan dependency on the exportation of slaves.

On Midsummer's Day 1821 seven little boys, newly arrived from Madagascar, were enrolled into Class 1 of the Borough Road School in Southwark, south London. None of them spoke any English, and during the long voyage they had had to rely on an older boy called Virkee, who spoke French Creole. Two of the youngest, the seven-year-old twins Thotoos and Volave, were unable to ask for food and attention because they could not make themselves understood. In later life the twins recalled the miserable journey:

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