The present study has first of all enabled us to give satisfactory answers to the questions raised in the introduction. Sources such as parish registers and the records of the Commission for American Claims yield considerable information about London's black population in the late eighteenth century. Some blacks had come to England in the course of their working life, individually as seamen or as servants. But the great majority of those who became involved in the Sierra Leone expedition were transferred ‘loyalists’ from America or the West Indies, that is, persons who had been caught up in the American war, who had served on the British side, and who had been discharged in England after the end of the war. Most were in their twenties, and since there were relatively few women among them (or among the previous black community in England) a significant number took white wives. London's blacks were concentrated in the East End, and, apart from their colour, their most unifying characteristic was their poverty.

The attitudes of the native white population towards the blacks varied. ‘West Indian’ pro-slavery writers were predictably hostile, and some newspaper articles contained prejudiced comments. But the great majority of newspaper items (although often inaccurate or misleading in their coverage of the Sierra Leone expedition) were sympathetic in tone. The fact of intermarriage and the good public response to the Committee's appeal for money to help poor blacks also indicate that racial hostility may have been less common than has often been assumed.