Christ’s Hospital and the Trade in Enslaved People

During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in particular, a significant contributor to Britain’s economic growth and development was its participation in the Slave Trade. Millions of slaves were trafficked from Africa to colonies in the Americas and the Far East.

That this occurred is abhorrent to us and we condemn it. Today, the trafficking of humans against their will is rightly considered, universally, as wholly unacceptable.

We have learned that in the period mentioned above, some of Christ’s Hospital’s Office Holders, Governors and Benefactors personally benefited from their participation in the Slave Trade either as investors in the companies engaged in it or as members of their management or both.

The individuals concerned were successful businessmen with, in many cases, a wide range of business interests from which they derived their wealth. Where they were our Benefactors, the passage of time means that we do not know and would be unable to trace if the source of the philanthropy we received was derived from the profits earned from the Slave Trade. It is, however, at the very least plausible to suggest that some part of it may have done so.

We regret that some of those closely associated with our history participated in and benefited from activities which we now rightly renounce as unethical and wrong.