New book on Skegness African Village boss
An African who became a well known character and entrepreneur in Skegness in the 1930s is the subject of a new book.
Bulaya Chanda, also known as Samson Jackson and Chief Luale, ran the African Village attraction in the resort’s Butlin’s Amusement Park.
With the help of Bulaya’s 95-year-old daughter, Joan Robson, of Grimsby, historian Anne Samson has researched his life and written Bulaya Chanda: African ‘Boy’ to English ‘Dandy’.
Born in Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, around 1895, Bulaya was one of only five black Africans known to have served as a combatant at the Western Front during the First World War. In order to enlist, he changed his name in 1915 from Bulaya Chanda to Samson Jackson.
However, in the 1920s he started using the name Chief Luale for his stage work as an actor in London’s West End. He appeared with John Gielgud and Hermione Baddeley and others, and befriended the famous black American singer and actor Paul Robeson.
In 1922 Bulaya was married at Croydon, under the name Henry William Jackson, to an English woman, May. In the marriage register his father was described as Watson Jackson, a Chief (tribal leader).
Bulaya’s career then had a change of direction as he took his own very original show on the road.
When he participated in an Edinburgh carnival, advertising for the event stated: “We have Chief Luale and his retinue who pass idle moments by walking on broken glass, eating fire, and indulging similar humours which are not within the daily programme of the ordinary mortal. But then Chief Luale is a ‘Big Chief’. He will tell you so himself.”
The Chief went on to appear at Morecambe Carnival and then worked at a travelling circus. Anne Samson’s book records that Morecambe marked a new phase in Bulaya’s career – that of an African chief educating, “albeit reinforcing stereotypes”, and entertaining the British public about Africa.
In 1927Billy Butlin, later famed for his holiday camps, started his Central Amusement Park on Skegness foreshore. Bulaya teamed up with the legendary showman and one of the park’s attractions was an African Village, complete with an African snake charmer, Naomi. It appears that Butlin was involved in all the places that Bulaya was to visit between 1931 and 1935.
On June 4, 1930, the Skegness News informed visitors to the park that they would be “attracted by the African Village, which has been reconstructed with picturesque reality. Over it Chief Luale holds sway, and he and his dusky followers entertain with grotesque native dancers.”
The “News” later reported on the popularity of the African Village: “The Chief walks on glass and eats fire; there is a man-woman (‘the world famous Jacob-Jacqueline’) and all sorts of weird individuals therein without any extra charge.”
In 1931 a Boating Lake Carnival was held in Skegness billed as “The Great Event of the Season”. It included “a special display by Chief Luale’s Native Zulu Warriors, attack on settlers’ camp etc.”
Bulaya branched out, taking his show on tour in the UK. He also opened a menagerie at a new amusement park in Hunstanton.
During the holiday season Bulaya, together with wife May and little daughter Joan, rented rooms at the Lion Hotel (now Wetherspoons’ Red Lion), which was then Skegness’ leading commercial hotel. He formed a business partnership with May and Emily Osborne Parrott, the Lion’s licensee, known as Luale Ltd. May was the company’s director and secretary, with the Lion as its business address.
In addition to the African Village, Bulaya now also ran a snake pit at the Skegness amusement park, with a snake temple, a 20ft long boa restrictor, pythons and “reptiles from all over the world”.
In 1934 he entered his African Village in the Skegness Carnival procession giving “impressions of life in a native village to the accompaniment of much smoke, fire and tom-toms”. In the winter his Zulu “warriors” were touring the provinces.
Anne Samson’s book relates that in 1934 Bulaya was living the life of a Dandy.
Mrs Parrott’s great-nephew, former Skegness Standard editor John Cowpe, says he was told by family members that his great-aunt was Bulaya’s benefactor, buying him a posh car and expensive clothes.
John says: “Mrs Parrott was a formidable character, very intelligent and business-minded, who ran a tight ship at the Lion following the premature death of her husband, Bert Parrott, who was joint licensee of the hotel.”
However, Bulaya’s rising fortunes were tragically cut short in 1935 when he was admitted to Skegness Cottage Hospital suffering from pneumonia. Eleven weeks later he died at a Louth sanitorium, aged somewhere between 34 and 40.
He was cremated at Nottingham, at that time the nearest place to Skegness with a crematorium.
Tributes were paid by the British Legion, Skegness branch, of which Bulaya was a member. He had also been a member of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.
Letters sent to May following the death of this larger than life character showed he had a wide range of contacts and friends. One of these was Dr Abubakr Ibiyinka Olorun-Nimbe, who was the first Lord Mayor of Lagos, Nigeria. In a letter to May following Bulaya’s death, he spoke of his plans to stay at the Lion Hotel with a Miss Stewart. He queried whether the tariff was 15 shillings a day each or for both of them.
It is thought that the African Village continued to be operated at Skegness for a period after Bulaya’s death, probably by Naomi the snake charmer and others he had worked with.
May died in 1994. Daughter Joan was registered as a nurse in 1961 at Scartho Road Hospital and General Hospital, Grimsby, and went on to become a matron. She still lives in Grimsby with husband Brian.
John Cowpe met Joan for the first time about four years ago as the result of a remarkable coincidence. When John was doing some research of his own it was suggested to him that the North-East Lincolnshire Archives Office had some information about Bulaya. He phoned the office and the woman who answered the call confirmed that they did indeed have some details.
She continued: “Actually, his daughter is sitting with me in the office now.”
The phone was passed to Joan and she agreed to meet John,
He says: “Since then my wife Wendy and I have been delighted to become friends of Joan and Brian. Anne’s book has now given a great insight into Bulaya’s life and character. He was a true ‘one-off’ who had a very full, but much too short, life.”
Anne Samson, who holds a doctorate in history from Royal Holloway University, London, is a specialist in the First World War in Africa. She runs the Great War in Africa Association. She and her husband are also directors of a small publishing house called TSL Publications. Anne believes her book will be a useful educational aid for students.
Bulaya Chanda: African ‘Boy’ to English ‘Dandy’, price £11.67,is available online through https://tslbooks.uk/produce/bulaya-chanda-anne-samson or from the Great War in Africa Association https://gweaa.com