The London hospital funded by donors who invested in the slave trade

St Barts is one of many UK institutions whose benefactors were involved in the trafficking of enslaved Africans

Inside the Great Hall of St Bartholomew’s North Wing, alongside stately portraits of the apostle from whom London’s oldest hospital takes its name and King Henry VIII, extravagant commemorative boards adorn the walls.

The Great Hall was a grand, formal space where governors weighed their philanthropic donations and drafted their wills, many while investing in the stock of companies built on the trafficking of enslaved Africans. Today, many of those donors are commemorated in acrylic gold paint on the boards.