New Arrival I Am Pasha Liffey

The Story of the Last Black African Hanged in Scotland
The story of the last black African hanged in Scotland: a life shaped by racism, empire and British colonialism.
‘I Am Pasha Liffey’ were the last recorded words of the young man from Lesotho in southern Africa, guilty of the brutal murder of 61-year-old Mary Jane Jose in Larkhall, Lanarkshire in August 1905. His crime, trial and punishment and the resulting publicity reveal what it was to be Black and poor, on display and on the move, in the years between his birth and his execution.The narrative shows how of perceptions of race, white civilisation and African savagery shaped Pashas life, in Africa and Britain, where he worked as a stable boy, house servant, groom, stage performer, milkman, muleteer, army scout, circus hand, barman and boxer. It is also an account of his victim the Cornish pit-head worker, migrant and mother whose family struggled with poverty, dangerous and deadly