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

Louisa Twining (1820–1912)

a summary of her Bloomsbury connections

She was a long-time Bloomsbury resident; she moved with her family as a child to Bedford Place and lived there for 30 years, and later moved to 20 Queen Square, where she lived from 1866 to 1882 (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

She was thoroughly involved with both the local society and local charitable enterprises, many of which she started herself

In the 1830s she remembered that “Crabb Robinson, our neighbour in Russell Square, frequently came to enjoy a chat with my mother”, and she also recalled visiting Mr Curtis’s entomological collection in Charlotte Street (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

In the 1840s she attended F. D. Maurice’s lectures in Queen’s College, Harley Street, and his Bible class at Queen Square, next door to her future home

In the 1850s she frequented the British Museum for both its art and its insects: “I can never forget the delightful mornings I spent there, in the then old library, crowded and inconvenient as it was, carrying my large portfolio or books with me, and…sometimes visiting the manuscript room, and the print room as well” (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

In 1850 she assisted at F. D. Maurice’s newly opened premises for needlewomen in Red Lion Square, reading aloud to the women as they worked (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

From the 1840s onwards she was visiting the poor, and published a pamphlet, A Few Words about the Inmates of our Union Workhouses in 1855; she was a member of the congregation of St Giles when Rev. A. W. Thorold was Rector there, and she became familiar with the poor of St Giles’ Workhouse (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

In the same year, she made various visits to the House of Mercy at Clewer run by the Sisterhood of St John Baptist, seeing the old buildings and the laying of the foundations of the new ones (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

She went to Great Ormond Street Hospital every morning for a considerable while in 1858–1859 to learn about nursing, but found she could not do it (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

She founded the Workhouse Visiting Society in 1858

She was involved with the Deaconess movement in the Church of England, and “was present at the opening of the Home in Burton Crescent, where for many years the work was carried on, under Elizabeth Ferard and the Rev. Pelham Dale…I was much disappointed at the slow progress made in England during many years...“[a]fter thirty years, however, we may hope that signs of growth are developing” (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

She opened St Luke’s Home for epileptic and incurable women in her own home, 20 Queen Square

She opened the Industrial Home for workhouse girls at 23 New Ormond Street (now 22 Great Ormond Street) in 1861

In the next year and next door, she opened a Home for the Aged and Incurable at 22 New Ormond Street (now 20 Great Ormond Street)

She supported the Metropolitan and National Nursing Association, being on its Council (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893)

She also set up the Home for Lady Art Students in Brunswick Square in 1879, along with Angela Burdett-Coutts, who helped finance many of her enterprises

Commentators have found it understandably difficult to disentangle her intricately-interconnected institutions: “St Luke’s Home for Epileptic and Incurable Women...was also a base for some nurse training and towards the end of Twining’s management offered accommodation to female art students” (Theresa Deane’s ‘Late Nineteenth-Century Philanthropy: The Case of Louisa Twining,’ in Anne Digby and John Stewart ed, Gender, Health and Welfare, 1996)

In 1882 she decided to leave 20 Queen Square; she handed the house over to her friend T. H. Wyatt, leaving in August 1882 and sending some of her own paintings, including copies of old masters, to the Working Men’s College in Great Ormond Street, and some to the Art Students’ Home (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893

Some of her drawings were given to an art gallery in South London begun by Mr Rossiter, one of the first students at the Working Men’s College (Louisa Twining, Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining, 1893

She was also a supporter of medical institutions; her name appears on several of the letters to The Times written in support of the Metropolitan Provident Medical Association (The Times, 6 July 1885; 5 April 1902) and its Secretary, Charles Warren, attended her funeral (The Times, 30 September 1912)

For more biographical information and information about Louisa Twining’s charitable activities, see her Recollections of Life and Work: Being the Autobiography of Louisa Twining (1893)

For more general biographical information about Louisa Twining, see her entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography