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- Sir Hans Sloane
- Also known as
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Sir Hans Sloane
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primary name: Sloane, Hans
- Details
- individual; collector; medical; academic/intellectual; British; Male
- Life dates
- 1660-1753
- Address
- Bloomsbury Place (the houses later numbered 3 and 4)
Manor House, Chelsea
- Biography
- Physician and collector. His library and collections of antiquities, works of art and natural curiosities was bequeathed to the nation in return for the sum of £20,000 to be paid to his daughters, Sarah Stanley and Elizabeth Cadogan, and formed the chief foundation collection of the British Museum. Although money changed hands, the amount was at most one-quarter of the value of the collections and the transfer is referred to as the Sloane Bequest.
Born in Ireland; trained as a physician in London and France; 1687-89, to Jamaica as personal physician to the governor, Christopher Monck, Duke of Albemarle.1693 set up what was to become a highly successful medical practice in Bloomsbury; 1695, married Elizabeth Rose (d.1724), widow of a Jamaican planter who brought with her a substantial income from her late husband's estates; also made a considerable amount of money from promoting milk chocolate. 1695, elected secretary of the Royal Society which he was responsible for revitalising; 1727, succeeded Newton as President, retiring in 1741. 1696, published his catalogue of Jamaican plants, and in 1707 and 1725 the two volumes of his "Voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers, and Jamaica, with the natural history ... of the last of those islands" . 1712, appointed physician to Queen Anne (subsequently also to George I and George II); 1716, created baronet. 1719, President of the Royal College of Physicians. 1722, as landlord of the manor of Chelsea, conveyed the Physick Garden to the Society of Apothecaries in return for an annual payment of £5. 1742 retired to Chelsea where he
died on 11 January 1753.
- Bibliography
- Arthur MacGregor (ed), 'Sir Hans Sloane', London 1994; 'Who Was Who in Egyptology', Dawson & Uphill, Ed. Bierbrier, Third Revised Edition, EES, London, 1995; A. Walker, A. Macgregor and M. Hunter (editors) 'From Books to Bezoars: Sir Hans Sloane and his Collections', London, British Library, 2012
For his print collection, see Antony Griffiths in 'Landmarks in Print Collecting', BMP, London,1996, pp. 21-29.
James Delbourgo,' Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane', 2017 (Penguin and Harvard)
