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

James Gilliland Simpson (1751–1851)

(not to be confused with James Gilliland Simpson (1865–1948), Dean of Peterborough)

a summary of his Bloomsbury connections

He was a Scottish-born merchant who moved to London from Edinburgh in 1806

He married Jane Horsburgh in 1825, and they both became involved with the controversial congregations led by Rev. Edward Irving

Mrs Simpson later started speaking in tongues

Eventually both Simpsons were expelled from Irving’s congregation

They were both active in Christian societies aimed at educating and converting Jews; Mrs Simpson was Secretary of the Ladies’ Society for Jewish Females, established in 1840 (Elijah Hoole, The Year-Book of Missions, 1847) and James Simpson was Hon. Secretary of the Society for Promoting Industry and Religious Instruction amongst the Jews of Both Sexes