Background
Originally named "Aina", Sara was born in 1843 at Oke-Odan, an Egbado village.
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Intended by her Dahomeyan captors to be a human sacrifice, she was rescued by Captain Frederick East. Forbes of the Royal Navy, who convinced King Ghezo of Dahomey to give her to Queen Victoria. "She would be a present from the King of the Blacks to the Queen of the Whites," Forbes wrote later. He named her Sara Forbes Bonetta, Bonetta after his ship the HMS Bonetta.
Victoria was impressed by the young princess"s exceptional intelligence, and had Sara raised as her goddaughter in the British middle class.
In 1851 Sara gained a long-lasting cough, believed to be caused by the climate of Great Britain. She was sent to school in Africa in May of that year, at the age of eight, but was unhappy and returned to England in 1855 at the age of 12.
In January 1862 she was invited to and attended the wedding of the daughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Alice. Sarah Forbes Bonetta died on 15 August 1880 of tuberculosis in Funchal, the capital of Madeira, a Portuguese island.
Her husband Captain Davies erected an over eight-foot-high granite obelisk-shaped monument in memory of Sarah Forbes Bonetta at Ijon in Western Lagos, where he started a cocoa farm.
The inscription on the obelisk reads: Indiana MEMORY OF PRINCESS SARAH FORBES BONETTA WIFE OF THE HON J.P.L. DAVIES World Health Organization DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT MADEIRA AUGUST 15TH 1880 AGED 37 YEARS.
