The London hospital funded by donors who invested in the slave trade

Inside the Great Hall of St Bartholomew’s North Wing, alongside stately portraits of the apostle from whom London’s oldest hospital takes its name and King Henry VIII, extravagant commemorative boards adorn the walls.

The Great Hall was a grand, formal space where governors weighed their philanthropic donations and drafted their wills, many while investing in the stock of companies built on the trafficking of enslaved Africans.

Hoje, muitos desses doadores são comemorados em tinta acrílica dourada nas placas.

O Registro de Comerciantes Britânicos de Escravos, uma joint venture entre Lancaster University, University of Manchester e University College London, inclui dados biográficos de todos os investidores conhecidos no tráfico transatlântico britânico de pessoas africanas escravizadas, desde o século XVI até o século XIX.

It reveals how wealthy individuals, often enriched by the proceeds from racialised chattel enslavement, donated to hundreds of church parishes and helped to fund schools, hospitals and charities across the country.

O Prof. William Pettigrew, que liderou o projeto, disse que o registro havia estabelecido conexões com cerca de 900 organizações. “A maioria dessas organizações buscava melhorar a vida dos britânicos comuns,” acrescentou.

The register reveals at least 50 people with deep financial ties to St Barts who are directly linked to this history.

Among the names etched on to the boards in the Great Hall is Sir Jeffrey Jeffreys, a London merchant who left an unspecified sum to the hospital in his will. In 1694, the Jeffreys-funded ship Hannibal, commanded by Capt Thomas Phillips, docked in Barbados.

This concluded a harrowing journey in which only 372 of the 700 enslaved African people bought at Whydah (Ouidah in modern-day Benin) survived the Atlantic crossing.

View image in fullscreenThe grand Hogarth Stair, which leads to the Great Hall, adorned with paintings depicting healing. Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianView image in fullscreenOrnate boards adorn the walls of the Great Hall in St Barts, where governors recorded their philanthropic donations, many while investing in the companies built on the trafficking of enslaved Africans.

Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianView image in fullscreenThe church of St Bartholomew the Less, in the grounds of St Barts hospital. Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianView image in fullscreenA portrait of King Henry VIII in the Great Hall of St Bartholomew’s North Wing, surrounded by the boards commemorating the hospital’s benefactors.

Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianPhillips’s journal, one of the few surviving records of the voyage, details the horrors onboard, where captives were subjected to branding and calculated psychological cruelty.

Phillips recalled using African overseers, who were enslaved themselves, to keep order, whipping any plotters of mutiny. There were grave consequences of the squalid conditions on the ship; many who died on the Hannibal were killed by smallpox, dysentery, starvation and suicide.

Some were thrown overboard when dead or dying to prevent the spread of disease and to protect profits.

The voyage’s mortality rate was close to 50%, cementing its place as one of the deadliest crossings in the history of the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans.

Ver imagem em tela cheia. Um diagrama de um navio mostrando as condições apertadas nas quais africanos escravizados foram traficados. Composição: Guardian. A travessia de Hannibal de 1694 foi uma das 13 às quais Jeffreys estava financeiramente vinculado.

O comerciante londrino foi diretor da Royal African Company de 1684 a 1686, e de 1692 a 1698. Seu último mandato coincidiu com o fim do monopólio real da empresa sobre o comércio de africanos escravizados, do qual ele lucrou generosamente.

He also inherited a fortune from his tobacco-trading uncle, John Jeffreys, in 1688. During Jeffrey Jeffreys’ time with the RAC, the organisation made 170 crossings.

Others commemorated at St Barts have links to the trafficking of enslaved Africans. Edward Colston, whose statue was toppled by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol in June 2020, appears in the register.

William Prichard, ex‑presidente de St Barts e um importante comerciante da City, comprou £600 de ações da RAC em janeiro de 1678.

Sir Robert Geffrye, who left money to the hospital and other philanthropic causes in his will, was a substantial investor in the trafficking of enslaved Africans, selling £1,600 (the equivalent of £350,000 today) of RAC stock on 5 January 1692 alone.

Diane Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, has called for the removal of Geffrye’s statue at the Museum of the Home in Hoxton.

In 1711, he attended Board of Trade hearings on the company’s operations on the west African coast, three years before he became lord mayor.

His predecessor, Samuel Stanier, who also left money to St Barts in his will, sold off most of his substantial £4,000 holding in the RAC in February 1698, before his lord mayoralty started in 1713.

After the British crown was restored in 1660, the trafficking of enslaved Africans became more formalised and was a lucrative source of funds for merchants.

Ele continuou participando das reuniões do conselho, sem servir formalmente, de 1671 até a dissolução da empresa. Isso o posicionou para investir pesadamente na RAC, o sucessor dos Adventurers, subscrevendo com £5.

18m today) and serving as an assistant from 1672-74. During his involvement with both companies, they undertook 81 crossings. Vyner left a portion of the remainder of his estate to St Barts after his death in 1688.

Like St Thomas’ hospital in Lambeth, south London, St Barts provided free medical care to the city’s sick and poor people, sustained by charitable donations from City merchants and rental income from land and property across the capital.

Last year, the stairwell leading to the Great Hall was restored and rehung with William Hogarth’s The Good Samaritan and The Pool of Bethesda. The hall’s baroque ceiling carries its own coded message, its botanical motifs – oak leaves for strength, laurel wreaths for triumph and palm branches for peace – all tied to themes of healthcare.

St Barts has acknowledged its links to slavery: Barts health NHS trust archives produced an official research guide in 2024 setting out the known history and how to investigate it further, though the trust has not commissioned a stand-alone enslavement report.

A spokesperson for the trust said it was “well aware that some notable individuals historically associated with our hospitals profited from the transatlantic slave trade”, and they were identified in the Great Hall because of their donations.

A spokesperson for Barts Charity, which supports the trust, said that, previously, “detailed research has not established whether, or to what extent, particular gifts can be traced into the assets managed by the charity today.

In 2023, the Scott Trust, the Guardian’s sole owner, published research showing the founder of the Manchester Guardian and his backers profited from the enslavement of African people in Jamaica and the US.

Em resposta, o Scott Trust lançou a série Cotton Capital e o programa Legacies of Enslavement, uma iniciativa de justiça restauradora de dez anos.