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

Frederic David Mocatta (1828–1905)

a summary of his Bloomsbury connections

He was the great-grandson of Abraham Mocatta, founder of the banking firm of Mocatta & Goldsmid; in 1851 he was unmarried, working for the family firm, and living in the family home at 2 Woburn Place

He subsequently married Mary Ada Mocatta, née Goldsmid (1836–1905), daughter of Frederick David Goldsmid of the same firm, and sister of Julian Goldsmid, who conformed to the family tradition of supporting educational and social causes

He was a tireless supporter of charitable causes, including working-class housing and hospitals; he was a prominent campaigner for the Metropolitan Provident Medical Association (The Times, 6 July 1885; 16 May 1894)

He was Vice-President of the Jewish High School for Girls and Day Training College for Teachers in Chenies Street (The Times, 17 January 1895)

He died without issue, and left his considerable library as the Mocatta Museum and Library to the Jewish Historical Society of England, who housed it at University College London; it became the Jewish Studies Library

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