At last count, at least 150 subscribers were listed in Barbados’ telephone directory with the surname of “Cumberbatch”.
That relatively large number reflects the deep roots of the different branches of the Cumberbatch family tree across the English-speaking Caribbean.
The name is also well-known to television viewers in Britain, North America, the Caribbean and other places where the popular BBC drama, Sherlock, is shown. The star of the series is Benedict Cumberbatch who plays the role of Sherlock Holmes, the detective who can solve the most complex criminal cases often without breaking a sweat.
So when Stacey Cumberbatch was appointed New York’s new commissioner of citywide administrative services by Mayor Bill de Blasio in January, thousands of New Yorkers asked the question: What is a black woman doing with a name like that? But Bajans in the city had a quick answer: You can find a “Cumberbatch” in many neighbourhoods “at home” and most, if not all, of them are people of colour.
Cumberbatch’s family connection with Barbados probably rang a bell with the mayor who once visited the island with his wife, Chirlane McCray, and the couple’s two children in search of the McCray’s roots. Her grandmother grew up in Barbados before heading to the United States.
“Everyone needs to know their roots,” McCray said recently. “After all, you cannot fulfill your future unless you honour your past.”
What then are the City commissioner’s roots?
She was born in Queens of parents who were the offspring of Barbadians. Going back in time, Cumberbatch, a New York University-trained attorney explained to a City newspaper reporter that her ancestors were among the slaves in the Caribbean country in the 18th century, a time when Blacks took the names of plantation owners, one of whom was Abraham Cumberbatch.
According to the Telegraph and the Daily Mail, two major London daily papers, Abraham was born into a rich Bristol family of merchants and adventurers whose fortune was traced to a sugar cane plantation in Barbados.
“The Cumberbatches are among the many prominent British families who once built their wealth and standing on the slave trade,” the Telegraph said.
That’s where the British actor, who played a leading role as a plantation owner in this year’s Oscar award-winning movie of the year, 12 Years A Slave, enters the Stacey Cumberbatch story. When the Bajan-New Yorker was quoted as saying she had had a link with the actor’s forebearers, not by “blood” but through the abhorrent slave trade in Barbados, her comments triggered intense interest in slavery, its abolition and the issue of reparations.
With 14 Caribbean states, Barbados among them, vowing to seek reparations from Britain, France and the Netherlands for the damaging effects of slavery, it stands to reason why her assertion caught media attention.
Benedict, 37, had previously acknowledged that his great-great-great-grandfather was the same plantation owner who had a sugar plantation in Barbados in the 1700s. He said his surname was quite common among West Indian families whose ancestors were slaves and the reason was the practice of Blacks taking the names of their “masters.”
Interestingly, he had also disclosed that his mother, Wanda Ventham, an actress who played his mother in Sherlock, had once urged not to use his real name in his professional career because he ran the risk of litigants in any reparations law suit claiming he had benefited from slavery, a charge he vigorously denied.
But when he played William Pitt in the 2006 movie, Amazing Grace, which focused on the role of the former British prime minister in the abolition of slavery, it was his way of offering a “sort of apology” for the history of brutal slave trade.
But none of this has detracted from Cumberbatch’s stature in New York.
Announcing her appointment in January, along with that of Jon Paul Lupo as director of the Office of City Legislative affairs, de Blasio described them as “two leaders of incredible achievement who are committed to putting City government to work for working people. They’ve spent their lives helping lift up their fellow New Yorkers and I’m proud to have them on our team.”
New York University Law School showered Cumberbatch with praise stating she had brought “a significant background in New York government to her new position.”
For her part, the commissioner says she is “committed to making sure every New Yorker feels pride and confidence in the men and women who make the City run.”
She’s well equipped to achieve that goal. Before assuming her current duties she was deputy executive director of the Financial Information Services Agency.
Before that she was an attorney in the City’s Housing Authority, one of America’s largest public housing agencies. She also served as a New York state assistant attorney-general.
