Mary Shannon

William ‘Billy’ Waters: busker, sailor, immigrant, amputee, father, lover, extraordinary talent, and a forgotten Black celebrity from Regency London. Like so many marginalised people from the past, however, he left no papers, writings, or diaries, and many basic facts about his life are missing. What remains are the 19th century images of him and Victorian tales of his life. Join his biographer Mary L. Shannon to explore his extraordinary adventures. We’ll also think about how visual images can be used to ‘fill in’ the gaps and silences in the records we have of past lives, and ask what it might mean to look with, rather than at, Billy Waters and others.

Dr Mary L. Shannon’s latest book Billy Waters is Dancing: Or, How a Black Sailor Found Fame in Regency Britain (Yale 2024) tells the story of Regency London’s forgotten Black celebrity. It won a 2025 NYC Big Book Award and has been turned into a free graphic novel for classrooms Billy Waters – The Stuff of History and a show Jump Billy!. Mary is a writer and Associate Professor in the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Roehampton, London. She’s the author of the award-winning Dickens, Reynolds, and Mayhew on Wellington Street and you can find her at marylshannon.com.