3-053-210 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

'Bushmen Children, Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly', 1845. African children: a girl of 8 and a boy of 16, exhibited in London. '...to the ethnographers, in a scientific point of view, these specimens of a "pigmy race" may be especially interesting'. In the accompanying text the boy and girl are referred to both as 'Bushmen children' and 'Hottentots'. These are Dutch colonial terms for Africans. Historically, the word 'Hottentots' was first used in the 17th century, to describe the Khoikhoi people who live in the western part of South Africa. The name is based on an imitation of the sound of the Khoikhoi language. The term 'Hottentot' dates from an earlier colonial period and connotes a culturally backward or primitive stereotype.