Allan Glaisyer Minns

Who was Allan Glaisyer Minns?

Dr Allan Glaisyer Minns was the first Black man to become a mayor in Britain. He was elected Mayor of Thetford, Norfolk in 1904.

John Archer, elected Mayor of Battersea in 1913, had been thought to be the first Black man to hold this title. However, in reporting Archer's election, the American Negro Year Book 1914 recorded that "In 1904 Mr Allen Glaisyer Minns, a col’d man from West Indies, was elected Mayor of borough of Thetford, Norfolk". He had been elected to the town council of Thetford in 1903 and served a two-year term as mayor from 1904.

The following extract is from Norfolk & Suffolk In East Anglia, Contemporary Biographies, W.T. Pike:

Dr Minns was registered with the British Medical Association on 14 February 1884. His qualifications were MRCS, and LRCP. He was based in Thetford from 1885 until 1923, when he moved to Dorking where he died.

He was one of nine children of John Minns and Ophelia. His paternal grandfather, also John Minns, had emigrated circa 1801 from England to the Bahamas where he married Rosette, a former African slave. His eldest brother Dr Pembroke Minns was already in medical practice in Thetford when he moved there.