UCL BLOOMSBURY PROJECT

History

It was apparently founded some time after 1834, in the versatile and accommodating Royal London Bazaar building

It seems to have been a grandly-named patent medicine outfit, not unlike the nearby British College of Health: “some quack medicine vendor is said to have renamed it [the Royal London Bazaar] the Palace of Hygiene, and distributed much advice and little medicine gratis” (Aleck Abrahams, ‘No. 277 Gray’s Inn Road,’ The Antiquary , vol. XLIV, 1908)

The quack has been tentatively identified as Neville Alfred Hooper, corn dealer and manufacturer of patent lentils, residing at the time at no. 12 Liverpool Street, the mansion at the south front of the Royal London Bazaar itself (David Hayes, ‘ “Without Parallel in the Known World”: The Chequered Past of 277 Gray’s Inn Road’, Camden History Review, vol. 25, 2001)

It no longer exists