What is the Bloomsbury Project?

The Leverhulme-funded UCL Bloomsbury Project was established to investigate 19th-century Bloomsbury’s development from swampy rubbish-dump to centre of intellectual life

Led by Professor Rosemary Ashton, with Dr Deborah Colville as Researcher, the Project has traced the origins, Bloomsbury locations, and reforming significance of hundreds of progressive and innovative institutions

Many of the extensive archival resources relating to these institutions have also been identified and examined by the Project, and Bloomsbury’s developing streets and squares have been mapped and described

This website is a gateway to the information gathered and edited by Project members during the Project’s lifetime, 1 October 2007–30 April 2011, with the co-operation of Bloomsbury’s institutions, societies, and local residents

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Cartoon satirising the British College of Health

Bloomsbury Institutions

Bloomsbury Streets, Squares, and Buildings

Bloomsbury and the Bloomsbury Project

Latrielle (sometimes spelt Latreille) family

a summary of their Bloomsbury connections

Frederick Latrielle was Secretary of the Bloomsbury Dispensary from 1863–1875; two of his sons Walter O. Latrielle and Henry C. Latrielle held the same position from 1875–1881 and 1895–1898 respectively (Roma McAuliffe, The Story of the Bloomsbury Dispensary, 1973)

Frederick was the son of a hatter from the poor Borough area of London, according to the 1841 census; however, he became well-off enough to marry in St George’s, Hanover Square in June 1843, according to marriage records

He and his wife Mary Sophia (née Cooper) subsequently moved to Bloomsbury; the 1861 and 1871 censuses show them at 5 Bloomsbury Place, with daughter Edith and sons Walter, Henry, and Alfred

Henry was born at 5 Bloomsbury Place (The Times, 4 November 1853); Frederick himself died there on 16 November 1883, aged about 72 (The Times, 20 November 1883), as did his widow Mary Sophia at about the same age on 25 February 1888 (The Times, 27 February 1888) and then their unmarried only daughter Edith, aged about 47, on 31 December 1892 (The Times, 3 January 1893)

“The parishes of St Giles’s and St George’s, Bloomsbury, have sustained a severe loss by the death of Mr Frederick Latreille, Chairman of the Board of Guardians and of the Almshouse Trustees for the united parishes, and of the Board of Managers of the Central London Sick Asylum District. Mr Latreille was 72 years of age, and had for 20 years been a very active and highly-respected public servant. His funeral yesterday was largely attended by his brother guardians, vestrymen and by the leading inhabitants of Bloomsbury and St Giles’s”
(The Times, 23 November 1883)

In addition to his involvement with the Bloomsbury Dispensary, Frederick Latrielle was also apparently the Secretary of the National Benevolent Institution at 56 Southampton Row in the 1850s (1851 Post Office directory; The Times, 10 November 1856)

In this post he was also succeeded by one of his sons; Henry C. Latrielle was Secretary of the National Benevolent Institution from at least the 1880s (The Times, 15 July 1886) and perhaps into the twentieth century (The Times, 26 November 1904, which lists the Secretary’s name as H. C. Latrielle)