The British Museum

Portrait of Sir Hans Sloane.

On his return to London, Sloane set up a successful medical practice at his home in No. 3 Bloomsbury Place--coincidentally just along the street from the present British Museum. He had a good bedside manner, accumulated wealthy and aristocratic patients, among them Queen Anne and Kings George I and II, but also participated in charitable work. Although not in the first rank intellectually, he was something of an innovator. He promoted inoculation against smallpox, the use of quinine and the health-giving properties of drinking chocolate mixed with milk, the recipe for which was used until recently by one of the UK's leading confectionery firms.

In common with other owners of immense collections, he absorbed complete collections made by others, which accounts for some of the odds and ends he owned. He also received objects from friends and patients. He was regarded with affectionate amusement by some of his contemporaries. One wit called him 'the foremost toyman of his time', a friend announced that he had 'ravaged air, earth, seas and caverns; Men, Women, Children, Towns and Taverns' to furnish Sloane's aptly named 'Nicknackatory'.

His collection thus outgrew the house at No. 3 and Sloane was obliged to purchase No. 4. In 1725 Benjamin Franklin called on him there and sold him an asbestos purse.

In 1742 Sloane moved with his collections to a manor house he had bought at Chelsea. Here he was still diligently adding to his hoard when he was more than 90 years old. There is a colourful and lengthy description of a visit by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1748, the Prince probably having been detailed to get the old man's collection for the nation, and this gives a flavour of this great cabinet, mentioning that:

[There were] several rooms filled with books; among them many hundred volumes of dried Plants; a room full of choice and valuable manuscripts...Below stairs, some rooms are fitted with the curious and venerable Antiquities of Egypt, Greece, Hetruria, Rome, Britain, and even America; others with large animals preserved in the skin; the great saloon lined on every side with bottles filled with spirits containing various animals. The halls are adorned with the horns of divers creatures...and with weapons of different countries...fifty volumes in folio would scarce suffice to contain a detail of this immense Museum...

Sloane's will directed that his collection should be offered to the British nation in return for £20,000 to be paid to his two daughters. Should the nation refuse, the collection was to be offered to various European learned academies--a potential fate which was bound to arouse nationalist sentiment. The King being somewhat indifferent, Parliament stepped in and in June 1753 the British Museum, funded from the proceeds of a dubiously conducted public lottery, was established to house Sloane's collections.

There are still many Sloane objects identifiable in the British Museum, although not surprisingly others cannot now be found. Of the Museum's collection of 138 Durers, for example, 98 come from Sloane.

Sloane had good contacts with the Americas--for example, General Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, was a trustee of his will. His collection therefore included early Inuit material, a fine Cherokee basket, and an Asante drum probably made in or taken to America by one of the earliest slaves. A particularly interesting item is an album containing copies (not originals) of drawings made by John White of the Roanoke colony in Virginia, many of which are now lost. White also produced drawings of Inuit, and the Sloane collection includes a copy of a lost drawing 'English Sailors in a Skirmish with an Eskimo' which may show an incident on Frobisher's 1577 voyage to the north-west.

What motivated Sloane? As we have seen he was a practical man. A contemporary wrote:

It was not...a trifling or vain Inclination of merely getting together a great Number of uncommon things, that induc'd him to spend £50,000 in purchasing the Rarities which every country produced. His constant Endeavour was to employ them to the best purposes, by making himself acquainted as far as possible with the Properties, Qualities and uses, either in Food, Medicine or Manufacture of every Plant, Mineral, or Animal that came into his possession.

Whatever his initial motives for amassing this vast collection, like many collectors, Sloane too wished to leave an enduring legacy. His curator, James Empson, related that

having been with the Deceased to his last Moments; [I] can positively assert, that one of his greatest inducements for disposing of his so extensive and large a collection in the Manner he has done has been that his Name, as the Collector of it, should be preserved to Posterity.