What is striking about the surviving advertisements and reviews of Pablo Fanque’s circus is how few of them make mention of his race. The Caledonian Mercury in November 1838 described him as ‘a gentleman of colour’ but dedicated far more column inches to describing his various ‘feats’ and ‘leaps’ than his complexion.41 Neither Blackwood’s Lady’s Magazine nor the Illustrated London News in 1847 saw any difficulty in describing this black British entrepreneur ‘as a native of Norwich’.42
