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Portrait of the mystery lady: The incredible story behind the 1. By. Paula Byrne. Published.

GMT, 4 May 2. 01. GMT, 4 May 2. 01. Until recently, little was known about the mixed- race girl in an 1. Kenwood House in London. But a new book and film reveal that Dido Elizabeth Belle was, in fact, the illegitimate daughter of a slave whose privileged upbringing helped change racial injustices for ever.

Gugu Mbatha- Raw, left, and Sarah Gadon, who star as Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray in Belle. The artist must have known that it was an unusual commission. The double portrait has a long and distinguished tradition. Typically, the subject would be a husband and wife, a mother and child, or sisters.

The composition above conforms to that of a portrait of sisters but, as far as we know, this is the only portrait of its era to show a white and a black girl together in a sisterly pose. The portrait was commissioned in the late 1. Earl of Mansfield, William Murray, who as Lord Chief Justice was the most admired judge in 1. Britain. His name by this time was irrevocably linked with the rights of slaves as a result of his judgment in the infamous Somerset case of 1. But these are not his daughters. He and his wife were childless. Watch Happiness Runs Streaming.

The girl in the foreground is Lady Elizabeth Murray, his great niece, who was brought up at Kenwood House on the edge of London’s Hampstead Heath, where this portrait was painted, after the death of her mother when she was a young child. It was believed until the 1. She was, in fact, a blood relative of the girl in pink and the Mansfield family and her name was Dido Elizabeth Belle, now the subject of a major new film. The late 1. 70. 0s portrait of the two young women. Belle’s father was naval officer John Lindsay, nephew to Lord Mansfield. At some point in his West Indian adventures he met a slave woman who was almost certainly called Maria.

She was Belle’s mother. We simply don’t know whether she was conceived by force, by consensual passion or as ‘duty’, which might have brought material benefits to her powerless mother on board the slave ship. The only thing we know for certain is that after her mother’s death, Captain Lindsay took a bold and unconventional step in arranging for his small daughter to be entrusted to Lord and Lady Mansfield and brought up in England, along with her cousin Lady Elizabeth Murray. There is every reason to suppose that Belle was brought up to be as educated and accomplished a young woman as Lord Mansfield’s ward. Belle and Elizabeth would have been taught elocution, French, some history and geography. There would have been a strong emphasis on Christian devotion, but they would also have learnt to draw, play a musical instrument and to dance.

Lord Hutchinson, who was an ex- Governor of Massachusetts, attended a dinner party at Kenwood in 1. He kept a diary and we therefore have a unique record of it. He was astonished when, after dinner, the 1. Belle came into the drawing room to take coffee with the guests. After coffee the ladies left the company to walk in the gardens, and – to Hutchinson’s horror – Lady Elizabeth walked arm in arm with Belle.

The security that Belle had known with the Mansfields began to change' His discomfort is evident from every line he writes about the black girl’s presence: ‘She is neither handsome nor genteel. My Lord calls her Dido, which I suppose is all the name she has. He knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her – I dare not say criminal.’Belle was not invited to dinner with the company, though this does not prove that she was normally excluded from family meals. It may well have been that the family were keen to protect her from stares and questions – or, worse, the contempt of people who might look down on her for her colour and illegitimacy.

The fact that Hutchinson mentions that he knew the gossip about her ‘history’ in his diary shows that she was an object of fascination in London society. The fact that she joined the company for coffee suggests that Lord and Lady Mansfield were not ashamed of her, and wanted to show visitors that she was part of the family.

No servant would have been seen drinking coffee with their masters. When Hutchinson toured the gardens after dinner with Lord Mansfield and Belle, he noticed the particular closeness between them. Mansfield proudly recounted her responsibilities: ‘She is a sort of superintendent over the dairy, poultry yard, etc, which we visited.’ As they walked and talked, Hutchinson noticed that ‘she was called upon by my Lord every minute for this thing or that, and showed the greatest attention to everything he said’. It was obvious that they doted upon one another. Mansfield was proud of her and was clearly showing her off, tacitly letting Hutchinson know how much she was valued.

Lord Mansfield, left, was a barrister whose rulings changed the rights of slaves; Belle’s father, right, was naval officer Sir John Lindsay. Tom Wilkinson stars as Lord Mansfield and Gugu Mbatha- Raw as Dido Elizabeth Belle in the film. Lord Mansfield was an innovator and one of the most famous men in the land. Wealthy, titled and powerful, he was equally known for his verbal brilliance and his fair- mindedness. As Lord Chief Justice for 3. English law and the court system. He is perceived as the founding father of modern commercial law, so vital to the new world of international trade and its necessary underpinning, insurance.

And so it was Lord Mansfield who came to preside over a key case towards the emancipation of slaves. James Somerset was an African slave who had been brought here by his master, Charles Stewart. Somerset had run away but had then been recaptured by Stewart and sold to the captain of a slave ship, ready to sail for the West Indies. Abolitionists filed a writ claiming that Somerset was a free man who had been falsely imprisoned. Mansfield could have ruled that Somerset was a piece of property.

Instead he signed the order asking for Somerset to be produced at court, and his ruling prevented his forced return to slavery. That precedent signalled that on English soil, no man was a slave.'The film Belle tells Dido Elizabeth Belle’s story for the 2.

The muttering in London that Mansfield’s decision had been swayed by his relationship with Belle makes his ruling all the more extraordinary, given how determined he always was to separate the personal from the professional. Mansfield dined with British merchants in his London home.

He included them in his courtroom to advise in many commercial cases and was regarded as being hugely favourable to their economic interests. Yet he did not flinch from coming to the judgment that the gossip- mongers said he would. In doing so he was perceived to have chosen the cause of his own black niece over that of the merchants who had made the nation rich.

Another notorious case presided over by Lord Mansfield was the Zong massacre of 1. A small slave ship, the Zong was dangerously overcrowded when it left Africa for Jamaica on 1. August. When an epidemic broke out on board, the captain made the decision to throw one third of the 4. He calculated that rather than let the slaves die on board and be rendered worthless, it would make more sense economically to kill them and claim the insurance money, arguing that the slaves were sacrificed for the others after the water supply had run out.

But it transpired that between the first and last group of slaves being thrown overboard, heavy rain had fallen, replenishing the water supplies. The insurers refused to pay up for the loss of the slaves and the case went to court.

Kenwood House in North London, where Belle lived with the Mansfields. Insurance was Lord Mansfield’s speciality, and he concluded that the insurers were not liable. The breathtaking brutality of the murders and the fact that drowned human beings could be reduced to an insurance claim brought home the urgency of abolishing the slave trade.