Dido Elizabeth Belle - at Kenwood House

At Kenwood House

Lindsay sent the child to his uncle, the Earl of Mansfield, who lived with his family at Kenwood House in Hampstead, which was then just outside London, England. Mansfield and his wife, who were childless, were already raising her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray after her mother's death; Dido was about the same age as Elizabeth. It is possible that Mansfield took Dido in to be Elizabeth's playmate and, later in life, her personal attendant (her role within the family as outlined below suggests that her standing was more that of a lady's companion than a lady's maid).

Dido spent some 30 years at Kenwood House. Her position was unusual because she was formally the daughter of a slave, and as such would have been considered a slave outside of Britain. But she was to some extent treated as a member of the family. Lord Mansfield himself resolved this paradox in his capacity as Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales. When called on to judge the case of an escaped slave, Somersett's Case, he decreed: "The state of slavery is of such a nature, that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political; but only positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasion, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory: it's so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England." Mansfield's decision was taken by abolitionists to mean that slavery was abolished in England, although his wording reserves judgment on this point, and he later said it was only to apply to the slave at issue in the case. Historians have since suggested that his personal experience influenced his decision.