Auction house Sworders is offering a rare carte-de-visite showing Jacob Washington besides the coffin of David Livingstone, made by the London studio of Elliott & Fry in 1874. The story behind the carte is poignant.
The fourteen-year-old Jacob Wainwright (c.1859-1892) was hired to accompany Dr Livingstone as he explored East Africa. Jacob had been sold to slavery as a child, but was liberated by a British anti-slavery ship and subsequently sent to an asylum for freed slaves in India.
Having contracted dysentery, Livingstone died at Chitambo, near the edge of the Bangweulu Swamps in modern Zambia, on 1 May 1873. Wainwright and two other Africans, Abdullah Susi and James Chuma, resolved to bring his body the 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the British consulate at Bagamoyo in Zanzibar. Before the journey, Livingstone's heart and entrails were removed from his body and buried in an iron box. Wainwright recorded that a massive blood clot, possibly a cancerous tumour, was found in the lower bowel. At the burial ceremony, Wainwright read from the Book of Common Prayer, and he was also given the responsibility of making a full inventory of Livingstone's possessions.
The Church Missionary Society paid for Wainwright to accompany Livingstone's body back to England and he faithfully guarded the coffin on its journey. The explorer's funeral took place in Westminster Abbey, on 18 April 1874, with Wainwright the only African among the eight pallbearers. Following Livingstone's death, Wainwright stayed in England at Kessingland, Suffolk, and also spent time travelling across the country addressing meetings of the Church Missionary Society, before finally making his way back to Africa, dying in Tanzania in 1892.
Out of the Ordinary
19 August 2025
In person and online, lot 315
See: https://www.sworder.co.uk/auction/lot/lot-david-livingstones-coffin-attended-by-jacob-wainwright/?lot=538766
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