A WAlk Around BloomsBury with Sir Hans Sloane

Healing Histories

3 Bloomsbury PlaceSir Hans Sloane lived at 3 Bloomsbury Place for most of his life until he moved to Chelsea in 1742. It was from here that he practised medicine. Sloane treated poor patients for free. However, rich people had to pay. Sloane kept his collection here too. Can you see the blue plaque to Sloane here?

St George’s Church - OutsideSt George’s Bloomsbury was designed by architect Nicholas Hawksmoor. It was opened in 1730. The church is instantly recognisable, as it has an unusual steeple showing George I in a toga. It also has a lion and a unicorn on it, both fighting for the crown. The lion represents England and the unicorn represents Scotland.

St George’s Church - InsideBoth rich and poor parishioners worshipped at St George’s. To avoid getting too close to the poor, rich parishioners, like the Dukes of Bedford and Montagu, preferred to worship in the galleries. Sir Hans Sloane, who was also a vestryman at St George’s, had a pew in the south gallery too.

Bedford HouseBedford House was built in the 1660s by the Earl of Southampton, when Bloomsbury was mainly fields. It was originally called Southampton House, but then it was inherited by the Duke of Bedford. It was renowned in Georgian times for the quality of its design. The house was demolished in 1800. It’s garden became Russell Square.

Outside Montagu House The British MuseumThe first building to house the British Museum collection was Montagu House. It was purchased by the museum’s trustees in 1755 from the heirs of the Duke of Montagu, a friend of Sir Hans Sloane. Sloane’s collection of c.71,000 objects formed the basis of the museum’s collection. Montagu House was finally demolished in 1840s and the current building was constructed.

Inside Montagu House The British MuseumThe British Museum in Montagu House opened to the public in 1759 with small groups admitted for a conducted tour. But the tour was less about sharing information, than satisfying the curiosity of visitors by seeing the strange specimens and exotic objects from Sir Hans Sloane’s collection. Go in to the British Museum to see the Enlightenment Gallery which displays some of Sloane’s collection.

Bloomsbury SquareBloomsbury Square was first known as Southampton Square. In early Georgian times, Bloomsbury Square was thought one of the finest parts of London, partly because of its good air. However, it was also a popular place for duellists and later became the scene of a destructive riot. There is a garden dedicated to Sloane in this square.

Bloomsbury MarketThe market is now long gone but, in Sir Hans Sloane’s time, Bloomsbury Market was a very busy and filthy place. The market was also quite a dangerous place. Numerous accounts of robberies exist and punishments included deportation to the colonies or even death. This was the fate of William Harper, sentenced to death in 1733, for pickpocketing.

Circular RouteStart anywhere taking in Great Russell Street, Southampton Row, Bloomsbury Way and Museum Street.

Hello, my name is Sir Hans Sloane and I lived in Bloomsbury in the early

eighteenth century. Come with

me on a tour of the area and I will show you what it was like living here and tell you a little about my extraordinary life.

AcknowledgementsThis trail was researched, written and designed by Year 5 pupils from Holy Trinity C of E Primary School in 2012. They were helped by historian Katie Potter, writer Michael McMillan and designer Sav Kyriacou. Thanks are due to Katharine Hoare, Education Manager at the British Museum; Pamela Forde, Archive Manager at the Royal College of Physicians; Tudor Allen, Senior Officer at Camden Local Studies and Archives and Frank Macey, volunteer at St George’s Bloomsbury.Special thanks are also due to the Heritage Lottery Fund, which provided grant funding for the London Borough of Camden to run the Healing Histories project, of which this Hans Sloane Trail is one element.All images are ©Trustees of the British Museum except where indicated. We recommend using the British Museum’s online collection search to find more artefacts collected by Sloane and many others.

©N

ational Portrait Gallery, London

Other places to visitOther places related to Sir Hans Sloane that you can visit in London are:

British LibraryMany of Sloane’s manuscripts and books are kept here after the library of the British Museum was incorporated into the new British Library in the 1970s.Nearest tube: Kings Cross/St Pancras

Foundling MuseumSloane was a co-founder of the Foundling Hospital. Handel was a later governor and performed the Messiah there to help raise funds for the hospital.Nearest tube: Russell Square

Royal College of PhysiciansSloane was a president of the College when it was at Warwick Lane in the City of London. It is now by Regent’s Park. Nearest tube: Great Portland Street

Handel House MuseumHandel’s house on Brook Street in Mayfair has been restored to its early eighteenth century splendour and opened to the public. Nearest tube: Bond Street

A dAy in the life of Sir Hans SloaneMy name is Sir Hans Sloane and I was born in 1660 in Killyleagh, County Down, northern Ireland. As a boy I saw local people eating edible seaweed to cure scurvy and as a teenager I was severely ill for three years. After studying in London and Paris, I eventually became physician to George I and George II. Yes, I lived a long time: ninety two years. Though I am famous for treating royalty, I would like you to follow me on this trail back to the 18th Century to find out more about where I lived and worked, and a few other things I am also famous for. Now please do not walk too fast; I am an old man and ill in health.

3 Bloomsbury PlaceThis is my house at 3 Bloomsbury Place. I rise early at 6 o’clock and I am fittingly dressed for a busy day. Before 10 o’clock this morning, I was visited by an African woman and gave her my services for free as I do for many of the poor, who would otherwise go ill because they can not afford to pay the fees we physicians have to charge wealthy plums. She told me that she had been a slave in Jamaica, an island in the West Indies, but was brought to England to be a house servant by a gentleman who had made a fortune from his sugar plantations. I was reminded of my two years in Jamaica as a young man, working as physician for the Duke of Albemarle, the new governor of the island and even treating the infamous ex-buccaneer, Sir Henry Morgan, who later became Lt-Governor of the island. I saw enslaved Africans like this woman labouring on a sugar plantation, which was owned by Fulke Rose, whose widow, Elizabeth, would later become my wife. Apart from other inheritances, a third of the income from his sugar plantations helped me to move into this house in fashionable Bloomsbury. In Jamaica, I also became curious studying and describing several plants, animals and insects and brought back 800 specimens that also included slave objects, such as the instruments these enslaved peoples produced their music with. My dear late wife and my daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, do not share my lifelong passion for collecting objects that has enabled me, and that rude Carl Linneaus, a greater scientific understanding of the world around us. They see it as an obsession as my collection has since outgrown this house and I have also purchased number four next door, where dinner guests can see my extensive collection after eating my meat and drinking my wine.

My collection must have attracted unwanted attention, because some men: John Shirly, Phillip Wake, James Walters and a few others started a fire at my front door and tried to rob us, under the pretence that they would help remove our possessions and my valuable collection to safety. But they were soon caught, charged and sentenced at the Old Bailey for their crime. I was just as upset about this incident as when the composer George Frideric Handel visited my house and placed a buttered muffin on one of my precious books. Can you believe the audacity! From Jamaica, I also brought back Peruvian Bark, containing quinine to treat malaria, and a new recipe

for mixing chocolate, milk and sugar, which have both been lucrative.To the African woman I said, ‘I advise you to do what I practise myself. I never take physic when I am well and when I am ill, I take a little and only such as has been well tried.’ I prescribed her my milk chocolate recipe, because after observing her symptoms, it would be light on the stomach

and good to consume. Before leaving the house, my next appointment is

with the diarist Samuel Pepys. He complains that he has to pay, but he is well off unlike the poor woman I saw earlier. I sent him on his way to the dispensary of the Royal College of Physicians, where I am President, for his remedy. Many of the apothecaries, what you would call pharmacists or chemists today, give remedies made from tortoise, alligator skin and many other gruesome ingredients, which I do not approve of.

Bloomsbury Square (above)Outside my house across the road is Bloomsbury Square, the first square in London, where some said that ‘Foreign princes were taken to the square as one of the wonders in London’ because the houses you could see were fine examples of Georgian architecture. In 1713, a mob rioted in this very square, with houses set alight, possessions and barrels of beer looted. Troopers on horses with swords and muskets were brought in to suppress the mob. The cause may have been political, though I believe the easy availability of gin had a lot to do with it.

Outside - St George’s BloomsburyDown from the British Museum is St George’s Church with its Corinthian columns, where I came to worship with my family. Before we go inside, please look up at my dear friend George I in a Roman toga. I am grateful to him for making me a baronet, but this poem to be found inside the church, if you look carefully, does tickle me:The King on the SteepleGeorgie-Porgie-Pudding-And-PieStands on top of a steeple,And thence he casts a weather-eyeOver the London people;The folk in Bloomsbury hurry by,But nobody bothers to wonder whyFat German Georgie stands so highOn top of a London steeple.

Georgie-Porgie once was a KingAnd governed the British people;Now he’s only a lonely thingOn top of a London steeple;The Bloomsbury chimneys smoke him blackAnd nobody cares but the steeple-jackWho washes the face and scrubs the backOf the King on top of the steeple.

Bloomsbury MarketThis is still a busy and noisy street. When Bloomsbury Market was here, you could hear the cries of stall holders selling all manner of meat and fish in Barter Street. The unbearable stench you are smelling is from the putrefying discarded remains of dead sheep, cattle, pigs and poultry led here through the muddy street, where you’re standing, to be slaughtered by the butchers. Watch out for the horse manure and be vigilant, there are many pickpockets in the vicinity.If you look closely, you will see an advertisement for Martin’s Best Virginia, with some little black children working on a tobacco plantation. Smoking this tobacco from a pipe has become fashionable, but I do not believe inhaling this smoke is healthy and it will probably not catch on. This is also where the gentry and nobility rubbed shoulders with common people from the Rookery, a slum in the parish of St Giles in the Fields nearby (see below, depicted by William Hogarth).I would usually send a servant to the market, so you can understand me wanting to escape the vile stench here.

Outside - Montagu House (below) Moving along Great Russell Street, we come to Montagu House, which had fields behind where robberies and murders took place. Please do not trespass onto the farm of the two sisters wearing riding habits and men’s hats. Children have been known to have the strings of their kites cut and their clothes stolen if they decide to bathe there. When I passed away in 1753, I bequeathed my collection of books, manuscripts, natural specimens and antiquities to King George II for the nation in return for payment of £20,000 for my heirs. This created the British Museum, which was originally in Montagu House. Some of my collection later helped create the Natural History Museum and the British Library.

Inside – Montagu HouseMontagu House was later demolished to create a larger building, which you now see. I am particularly proud of The Enlightenment Gallery in the new British Museum with its walls of books and cabinets of curiosities that houses many items from my collection of ancient books, parchments, scrolls, Greek pots, statues and natural specimens.

Coffee HouseThe trail is over and I will have to leave you now, because I am tired from walking and talking, but there are more places to visit. These include the Royal College of Physicians, the Foundling Hospital, Chelsea Physic Garden and Sloane Square, which I believe is named after me, as I retired to Chelsea when I was 82. I am ready for some milk chocolate at White’s Chocolate House (see above) and having a good joke with men of quality, such as the pirate and explorer William Dampier, who went round the world three times and whose adventures inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. He has a valuable specimen, which I would like to purchase.Goodbye and good day.

Inside – St George’s Bloomsbury All Londoners were affected by pollution from choking sulphurous coal smoke belched out of domestic and industrial furnaces, and to avoid the snuffling, coughing and spitting (see above, as depicted by William Hogarth), a gentleman of means would usually buy a pew upstairs in the gallery, where his family could worship in peace and quiet. I would normally have sat in my pew in the south gallery close to the Duke of Bedford, as we were

trusted vestrymen who donated to the making of the altarpiece or reredos made from Cuban mahogany from the West Indies.

Natural History MuseumSloane’s botanical and animal specimens were moved to the Natural History Museum when it was split from the British Museum in the 1880s. Nearest tube: South Kensington

Chelsea Physic GardenSloane owned the garden and leased it to the Society of Apothecaries for £5 a year in perpetuity. He also owned the manor of Chelsea and so some of the nearby streets are named after him. Nearest tube: Sloane Square

Chelsea Old ChurchSloane is buried here with his wife Elizabeth. There is a monument outside with an inscription commissioned by his daughters. There is also a more recent monument commemorating his importance inside the church. Nearest tube: South Kensington

GlossaryBaronet: a type of noblemanBuccaneer: A pirate, from a Spanish wordPhysician: A doctorPlum: A wealthy personVestryman: A church governor

Bedford House (above centre)Moving up alongside Bloomsbury Square, towards where Bedford Place is now, we come to where Bedford House, a grand Georgian mansion stood, home of my dear friend the Duke of Bedford. Near here a gruesome murder took place in my time and beggars ask for money – so beware!

©Royal C

ollege of Physicians

©Royal C

ollege of Physicians