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

Animation: Alexander Purcell. Illustrations by Diana EjaitaEnslaving nationSlaveryThe London hospital funded by donors who invested in the slave tradeSt Barts is one of many UK institutions whose benefactors were involved in the trafficking of enslaved Africans

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. Today, many of those donors are commemorated in acrylic gold paint on the boards.

The Register of British Slave Traders, a joint venture between Lancaster University, the University of Manchester and University College London, includes biographical data on every known investor in Britain’s transatlantic trafficking of enslaved African people from the 16th to 19th centuries.

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.

Prof William Pettigrew, who led the project, said the register had established connections with roughly 900 organisations. “Most of those organisations sought to improve the lives of ordinary Britons,” he added.

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. “Then we marked the slaves we had bought in the breast or shoulder, with a hot iron, having the letter of the ship’s name on it,” he wrote. The Africans on his ship, he recorded, held “a more dreadful apprehension of Barbadoes than we have of hell”.

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.

View image in fullscreenA diagram of a ship showing the cramped conditions in which enslaved Africans were trafficked. Composite: GuardianThe 1694 Hannibal crossing was one of 13 to which Jeffreys was financially linked. The London merchant was a director of the Royal African Company from 1684-86, and from 1692-98. His latter term coincided with the end of the company’s royal monopoly on trading enslaved Africans, from which he profited handsomely. 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, once president of St Barts and a leading City merchant, bought £600 of RAC stock in January 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.

Read moreThese connections run through the heart of the City of London’s political structure, with several lord mayors commemorated in the Great Hall. Sir William Humphreys, who left legacies to three London hospitals including St Barts, sat on the RAC’s court of assistants from 1683-85 and from 1688-90. 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.

View image in fullscreenSeveral leading City merchants who invested in companies linked to the enslavement of African people are commemorated in the Great Hall at St Barts. Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianView image in fullscreenAfter the British crown was restored in 1660, the trafficking of enslaved Africans formalised to become a lucrative source of funds for merchants. Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianView image in fullscreenThe Great 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 – are tied to themes of healthcare. Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianView image in fullscreenThe stairwell leading to the Great Hall was restored last year and rehung with William Hogarth’s The Good Samaritan and The Pool of Bethesda. Photograph: Wayne Crichlow/The GuardianThe private banker Sir Robert Vyner (also known as Viner) became a central figure in the City and was lord mayor of London from 1674-75. He first invested in the Company of Royal Adventurers in January 1663; by August, his holding had grown to two shares, worth £800. In January 1665, he bought a further £1,200 from the Countess of Chesterfield, and was elected to the company’s board where he served from 1667-70.

He continued attending board meetings, without formally serving, from 1671 until the company’s dissolution. This positioned him to invest heavily in the RAC, the Adventurers’ successor, subscribing with £5,000 (the equivalent of £1.18m 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.

“As further information comes to light we are discussing with Barts Charity and Barts Heritage, which manages the listed building, how we could most appropriately acknowledge the full story behind these historic links.”

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. We are reviewing the new findings with Barts Health and Barts Heritage and considering any appropriate next steps.”

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. In response, the Scott Trust launched the Cotton Capital series and the Legacies of Enslavement programme, a ten-year restorative justice initiative.