Outside Montagu House
The British Museum
Inside Montagu House
The British Museum
The 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.
The 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.
Bedford House
Bedford 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.
Circular Route
Start anywhere taking
in Great Russell Street,
Southampton Row,
Bloomsbury Way and
Museum Street.
with Sir Hans Sloane
Bloomsbury
3 Bloomsbury Place
Sir 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?
A Walk around
Healing Histories
©National Portrait Gallery, London
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.
St George’s Church - Inside
Both 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.
Acknowledgements
This 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.
St George’s Church Outside
St 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.
Bloomsbury Market
Bloomsbury Square
The 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.
Bloomsbury 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.
ASirDay
in
the
Life
of
Hans Sloane
My 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 Place
©Royal College of Physicians
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.
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.
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.
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!
Inside – Montagu House
Montagu 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.
Bloomsbury Market
Outside - St George’s Bloomsbury
This 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.
Down 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 Steeple
Georgie-Porgie-Pudding-And-Pie
Stands on top of a steeple,
And thence he casts a weather-eye
Over the London people;
The folk in Bloomsbury hurry by,
But nobody bothers to wonder why
Fat German Georgie stands so high
On top of a London steeple.
Georgie-Porgie once was a King
And governed the British people;
Now he’s only a lonely thing
On top of a London steeple;
The Bloomsbury chimneys
smoke him black
And nobody cares but the
steeple-jack
Who washes the face and
scrubs the back
Of the King on top of the
steeple.
©Royal College of Physicians
This 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.
Outside - Montagu House (below)
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.
Other places to visit
Other places related to Sir Hans Sloane that you can
visit in London are:
British Library
Many 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 Museum
Coffee House
The 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.
Sloane 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 Physicians
Sloane 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 Museum
Handel’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
Natural History Museum
Sloane’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 Garden
Sloane 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 Church
Sloane 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
Glossary
Baronet: a type of nobleman
Buccaneer: A pirate, from a Spanish word
Physician: A doctor
Plum: A wealthy person
Vestryman: A church governor