ABSTRACT
As previously noted, the absence of reliable data, relating to gross black numbers in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth century, has forced scholarship to rely on contemporary conjectures which are characterized by their disparity. Speculative totals vary from between ten and forty thousand and range from the conservative estimate to wild exaggeration, depending upon the degree of bias involved. Distortion of black numbers was the result perhaps of racist fears of miscegenation or of threats to white employment. Contemporary evidence reveals the congruity of black people in the major ports connected with West Indian trade from the early eighteenth century. In 1723 the Daily Journal referred to London's black population thus:*tis said there is a great number of Blacks come daily into this city, so that *tis thought in a short time, if they be not suppress'd the city will swarm with them'.2
