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

David Nasmith (1799–1839)

a summary of his Bloomsbury connections

He was a Glasgow-born missionary who founded and worked with numerous evangelical institutions in his home city in the 1820s

From 1835 he was involved with the foundation of a similar set of missionary institutions in London, starting with the London City Mission, for which he is now most remembered

The others were the British and Foreign Mission (later the Country Towns Mission), the Adult School Society, the Metropolitan Tract Society (possibly the English Monthly Tract Society, which was said to have been founded by Nasmith in Charles Knight’s obituary of Nasmith in his English Cyclopaedia: A New Dictionary of Universal Knowledge, vol. 4, 1857), the Reading Room, the British and Foreign Young Men’s Society (which was possibly the Christian Young Men’s Society), and the London Female Mission (Female Aid Society), most of them based on successful Scottish precedents (John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith: His Labours and Travels in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Canada, 1844)

Nasmith’s vision of numerous related organisations all working together from a single “Philanthropic Institution House” was at odds with some of the other members of the London City Mission, including Rev. Robert Ainslie, who feared Nasmith's efforts would be spread too thin, and that the Mission would suffer a loss of reputation and funds as a result (Robert Ainslie to the Committee of the London City Mission, 4 February 1837; in John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith: His Labours and Travels in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Canada, 1844)

Ainslie’s letter paid unintentional tribute to Nasmith’s energy as “the originator and prime mover of one and all of these institutions” (Robert Ainslie to the Committee of the London City Mission, 4 February 1837; in John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith: His Labours and Travels in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Canada, 1844)

He continued “For your convenience, and the affairs of your Mission, you have taken a suite of rooms at No. 20, Red Lion-square, commodious, and in every way eligible, and the house free from disrepute...In a few short months you are surrounded by several new neighbours; and the religious public, knowing that the founder of the Mission is the projector of these other new ones, begin to think that the Philanthropic Institution House has been taken for the creation of societies” (Robert Ainslie to the Committee of the London City Mission, 4 February 1837; in John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith: His Labours and Travels in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Canada, 1844)

Ainslie was particularly outraged by the proximity of the “probationary house for wretched females” run in the converted stables of 20 Red Lion Square by the London Female Mission (Female Aid Society) — disturbingly accessible, he thought, to the young men who attended lectures and meetings of the British and Foreign Young Men’s Society in the main house, although the Committee of the Mission had no such qualms (Robert Ainslie to the Committee of the London City Mission, 4 February 1837; in John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith: His Labours and Travels in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Canada, 1844)

Ainslie’s resignation from the Mission was followed quickly by that of Rev. Baptist Wriothesley Noel, who had similar misgivings about the proliferation of institutions, and who also thought there were too many Baptists and not enough churchmen among the Mission’s agents (John Campbell, Memoirs of David Nasmith: His Labours and Travels in Great Britain, France, the United States, and Canada, 1844)

Within a few weeks, David Nasmith himself resigned from the Mission, along with his friend Edward Trust Carver, and devoted himself to all the other institutions being run from 20 Red Lion Square, including his own new mission, the British and Foreign Mission (later the Country Towns Mission), which was again supported by Rev. Baptist Wriothesley Noel

Nasmith’s early death at the age of 40 in 1839 probably contributed to the demise of most of these organisations

For more general biographical information about David Nasmith, see his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography