This Black flower seller's identity was a mystery. But the answer has helped give one family closure

At the very start of the 20th century, a Black flower seller made her way to her stall outside Lloyds Bank in Hastings and had her picture taken. More than 100 years later, her great-great granddaughters are standing in front of that picture. They’ve made the journey from Canada and a mystery has been solved.

For the past four years, researcher Claudine Eccleston had been trying to piece together the woman’s life and trace her descendants. Now, on display in Hastings Museum and Art Gallery, Margaret Sullivan’s story lives on – and is helping her family heal a wound.

It’s a piece of powerful family history and a reminder of the role ethnic minorities have played in British society throughout history. In 2022, when Big Issue wrote about the search for the woman’s identity, little did we expect to end up meeting her real-life relatives.

Cindy Richardson, her daughter Chelsea and sister Shelley Baesey travelled all the way from Vancouver to attend the African Caribbean Seaside Memories exhibition being put on by WE OUT HERE. There was one thing immediately noticeable about them: as Eccleston put it, “You ain’t got no melanin.” They are white.

But in Margaret Sullivan’s face, Cindy and Shelley saw the same expression they saw on their father’s face when he was alive. Raised by adopted parents, their father died without knowing his roots.

“Our dad never knew, and he had great hurt all of his life because he never knew, and it was a joy to find out,” Cindy said as she stood by the picture of her great-grandmother. “She looks just like dad. I mean, honestly, it’s hilarious. When I saw her, I just thought, ‘Oh my gosh.’”

Her sister Shelley added: “It’s emotional because it’s a part of the history that we longed for when we were younger, when my dad was alive. We longed to know his history, and there was no way to find out.”

Cindy’s search began when she retired from nursing in 2017. Working through genealogy sites like Ancestry and 23andMe, she worked backwards in time through the family tree, first discovering her dad’s biological mother. The journey even took her to some common descendants in Winnipeg. But then, about 18 months ago, she got a message from Claudine.

Eccleston had been working since 2020 to find the story of the Black flower seller. The picture had been used as a postcard, sent out hundreds and hundreds of times by holiday-makers. But who was she? Eccleston started by asking local history groups, and edged ever closer to the story, through patch census data and spotty records.

In all, over the course of around 100 hours – “I went down a lot of rabbit holes, so I can’t count those hours,” she said, reluctant to reveal exactly how she had untangled the mystery – the story emerged. So she began messaging Sullivan’s descendants, and the two threads of the story met. “Cindy was pretty much the only person who said, ‘Oh my god, I’ll tell you everything you want to know,’” Eccleston said.

“When you talk about Black history or Black presence in England, we always come up with the Windrush, and occasionally now more and more there are images of people who served in the wars for this country before, and some of the terrible treatment,” she said.

“But just to have a regular Joe, an ordinary working class woman here. That was here in 1881. We know she was definitely here. For me it’s like, two fingers up to you. Yes we were here. We were making a contribution.”

So what do we know about Margaret’s turbulent life? She was born in Cheltenham, government papers show, around 1843, and supported herself by working as a hawker. She was 40 when she married William, and they had two daughters.

On three occasions, William was brought up in front of the court for assaulting his wife. They were different occasions, Eccleston knew, because of the different methods. A newspaper clipping on display showed Margaret giving evidence in court against William.

Beyond this, there is a newspaper report of him begging, and one of Margaret punching a neighbour in the eye for talking to their child. For that, instead of a fine, Margaret opted to spend seven days in jail. “It was sparky, I think they call it,” Eccleston said.

By 1901, Eccleston discovered, Margaret was living with her two daughters, away from William. She had secured a spot selling flowers outside Lloyds, under the colonnade on St Leonards marina. Illiterate, Margaret had managed to get someone from Lloyds to fill in her forms for the license – not an easy thing to obtain, said Eccleston. The spot, too, was desirable – near to the Royal Victoria. “That’s the place where queens and heads of state and only the wealthiest and the titled, that’s where they would all want to be,” said Eccleston.

The picture at the heart of the exhibition was taken in 1905, when Margaret would have been reaching the end of her 50s. Around that time, estimates suggest there were only 20-30,000 Black people living in the whole of the UK. She died in Hastings in 1919, by which time a branch of the family had already emigrated to Canada, making it possible for Cindy, Shelley and Chelsea to complete the circle over a century later.

Going back further than Margaret’s birth is a challenge – perhaps it is the limit of what they can truly know about their history. They’ll keep trying, but getting here had been its own reward. “It’s a privilege. I think it’s super cool,” said Cindy.

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