Campaigners pushing to remove Stroud’s 240-year-old figure are accused of trying to erase history by the local Tory MP
Much of Dan Guthrie’s life has been haunted by a disturbing mechanised figure resembling a tethered black slave boy, which is supposed to strike a bell hourly in the centre of Stroud. He first passed the automaton, which is known in clockmaking circles as a jacquemart, on his way to primary school in the 2000s and then secondary school – and now on his daily journey into work in the Cotswold town.
“My eyes lock on to the Blackboy clock every time I turn the corner on to Castle Street,” he explains from his home in Stroud. “The boy has huge red lips and is wearing a golden leaf skirt – and he is weirdly enslaved to the clock mechanism when it’s working. It is an offensive racist relic from the transatlantic slave trade, and the fact that it is still up in Stroud is a mystery to me.”