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Belle is based on the true story of Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate daughter of Admiral John Lindsay and an enslaved African woman. As a child she was sent to live with her father’s uncle William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield, who raised her as a free young gentlewoman at Kenwood House. That same Lord Mansfield, in his capacity as Lord Chief Justice, was later called on to rule in the case of the Zong Massacre, a controversial court case that followed the deaths of approximately 142 enslaved Africans on board the slave ship Zong in 1781. The owners of the ship went on to make a claim to their insurers for the loss of the slaves, one that was refused on claims that the slaves (many of which were diseased) were deliberately murdered after being deemed worth more dead than alive.
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