Early Life
Dido Elizabeth Belle was born around 1761. She was baptised in 1766 at St. George's Church, Bloomsbury. Her father, John Lindsay, nephew of the Earl of Mansfield, was at the time a Royal Navy captain on HMS Trent, a warship based in the West Indies that took part in the capture of Havana from the Spanish in 1762. It has previously been suggested that her mother was an enslaved African on board one of the Spanish ships captured during this battle, but the dates are inconsistent and there is no reason why any of the Spanish ships (which were immobilised in the inner habour) would have had women on board when they were delivered up on the formal surrender of the fortress. Dido's baptism record, however, shows that she was born while Lindsay was in the West Indies and that her mother's name was Maria Belle.
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