The Slave Trader Turned Banker: Slavery and the Origins of a Modern Bank

Based on primary sources and archival records of the slave trade
Written for Rebecca Scott’s history seminar: The Law in Slavery and Freedom
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Selling slaves equipped Liverpool merchant Thomas Leyland with the money to create what is now the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank of China. With profits from merchant trading and Caribbean slave sales, Leyland wrote thousands of letters to build a Transatlantic business. Analyzing these 250-year-old business records reveals the mechanisms of human trafficking.
From the comfortable distance of Liverpool, Bristol, and London, Leyland’s letters describe bodies he and his co-investors would never see some 4,500 miles away in the Caribbean. In an age before telegraphs, steamships, and rapid transcontinental communication, Leyland required a paper trail to carry out his orders. Across the distant branches of his global business empire, the medium of written letters linked these distant investments to London.
Thomas Leyland was a banker, trader, millionaire, and three times Mayor of Liverpool. Born 1752 to working class family of limited means, little land, and no royal titles, he chanced upon wealth when in 1776 he won £20,000 in the lottery. He was only twenty-four. This wealth he first invested in merchant ships to sell consumer goods and transport the likes of oats, peas, wheat, oatmeal, bacon, hogs, and lard from Irish farmers to British markets.[1] By 1783, with profits from these businesses, Leyland turned to the risk-intensive capital required to launch slave voyages, purchasing captives on the West African coast and selling them to cotton and sugar plantations in the Caribbean. His ~70 recorded slaving voyages transported an estimated 22,365 captives to the Americas, of whom about one in ten died during the months-long voyage. By his death in 1827, Leyland had amassed a fortune of some £600,000.[2]
Examination of his account books in Liverpool and at the University of Michigan show the 1789-90 journey of the Hannah with 294 African captives and the 1792-92 journey of the Jenny with 250 captives. Both year-long journeys began in Liverpool, sailed for West Africa, exchanged guns and cloth for human cargo, sold their captives in Jamaica, and then sailed home to Britain. His written correspondence of 2,262 letters also survives in the Liverpool Record Offices. Close reading of these documents in parallel – the ship manifest and the letter book – unpacks the mechanics and finances of Leyland’s slaving operation turned modern bank.
These documents reveal the mechanisms and mentality of a human trafficker. Never in them does Leyland claim – as a moral cover for their profit motives – that such African bodies were being saved from a darker fate of certain death from their African captors. These letters never claimed either that slavery was justified. Nor did Leyland use the cover of Christianity and the Christian language of missionary work to justify in his letters what he did to these Africans. His few written comments on the subject do not even recognize the need to justify slavery, the slave trade, or his role in it.[3]
Instead, the letters present the trafficking of human cargo in matter-of-fact language. In one day’s correspondence and from the same desk, Leyland ordered his agents to landscape the lawn of his country house, purchase grain from Ireland, deliver rum to an associate, and sell Africans in Jamaica. The tone of Leyland’s writing in flowing cursive script and flowery prose does not change, whether discussing matters as banal as drapery or as life changing as human trafficking. From Liverpool, Leyland managed business but at no point had he ever seen or inspected the human products he was buying, and nor did his London colleagues. In this way, these letters all describe slaves in the abstract, as bodies, as cargo, and profits per head sold. Leyland’s writing transforms the human body – a name, a person, a fate – into nothing more than a number on a page.

Watercolor of Leyland & Bullins bank on York Street in Liverpool in 1807. Bank offices at right. Leyland’s family home at left. Warehouse for Caribbean rum, Irish oats, and slave trade goods in rear. This building survives today unchanged. [4]

1. Preparing a Slave Ship: Manchester’s Industrial Revolution made Leyland’s slave trade possible.

From the comfort of his home office on York Street in Liverpool, shown above, Thomas Leyland secured potential buyers: He sent letters to colleagues in Liverpool and London. His colleagues each worked or owned outright sugar and cotton plantations in the Caribbean. Leyland informed each colleague when his ship of African captives was arriving in the Caribbean, and then asked if they were interested to buy from this ship. For instance, as Leyland wrote in August 1788 to James Baillie of London: “We shall be much obliged to you for your guarantee for your friends at Grenada, Dominica, & St. Vincent for the sale of the ship Christopher’s cargo. Captain Maxwell, who we expect to arrive in Barbados in December next with 250 to 270 Angola Negroes.”[5]
With letters of guarantee and promises from purchasers, Leyland then organized a slave ship. He contacted British manufacturers of clothes, fabric, silk, and other products. He transported them by land and then brought them aboard the Hannah to exchange for slaves. In March 1788, for instance, Leyland instructed Hannah Captain Charles Wilson to buy silk and cotton from Mr. Rawhuson in Manchester:
I request you will now order from Mather & Co 200 silk & cotton romalls, red, white blue, and with as little yellow in as possible, provided the price does not exceed about 14, the price heretofore paid by Caton [West African agent], who has explained to me how much preferable you will find this article in your trade.[6]
After loading 27 barrels of rum, fabric, and hundreds of other goods on the Hannah, Leyland drafted a detailed letter to Captain Wilson in June 1789. His letter inventoried the ship’s contents and suggested to Captain Wilson the ideal price to purchase and sell African captives. Leyland also shared in this letter to Wilson the names and addresses of Caribbean owners who had agreed to purchase Africans.

 

“Sales of 250 slaves imported in the ship Jenny, Captain William Stringer, from Angola on account of Thomas Leyland & Co, merchants in Liverpool” [7] Investor Thomas Leyland received two thirds of the profits. His cousin by marriage, Thomas Molyneux, received one third. Rather than listing captives by name, the center six columns list the number of slaves in each of six age groups: men, men-boys, boys, women, women-girls, and girls. Young girls without children or previous sexual relationships sold for a premium on slave markets. They were usually then raped by their new master, to produce mix-raced children who in turn were resold years later. In this way, girls’ bodies were investment vehicles to literally give birth to and extract future profits.

2. Managing a Slave Ship: The death of African captives was not an exception or flaw in Leyland’s financial system. Death was intentional and calculated to maximize profit.

What was the form and body of the ideal African captive to Leyland? Obedient. Docile. Young. Intelligent. But not too intelligent they could question authority.
The answers are found in ship manifests from the trade, instructions from English merchants to ship captains, and from plantation owners to their purchasers. They describe the bodies of captured peoples, their desired attributes, their height, gender, age, and physical form. For instance, Leyland wrote to Captain Wilson of the Hannah in 1789:
“It is most certain the healthy, young, and beautiful Negroes of that Country stand the only chance of being carried to a market in good condition.” In addition, consider “humanity and utmost tenderness to the Negroes, as particularly conducive to the prosperity of the voyage.” [8]
“Tenderness” and “humanity” did not code for the best interests and desires of the captives. Instead, these words code for Leyland’s desire that the captives were treated just well enough to survive and make it market on the 37-day transatlantic journey. In fact, Leyland budgeted to buy more slaves than he knew he would sell. He generally bought between five and ten percent more slaves per journey than he needed, in full knowledge that many would never make it across the ocean. When they died at sea, their bodies – on the orders of Captain Wilson – were tossed to the ocean. However, the Jenny and Hannah manifests neglected to mention deaths. In some cases, slave deaths were thought so unimportant and irrelevant that the names and ages of those who died were never recorded in writing.[9]
On arrival, Leyland negotiated prices with the auction houses of Michell & Daggers for the Hannah’s voyage, and Lindo & Lake for the Jenny’s voyage. Leyland had a rough idea of future profits. But when slaves arrived in Caribbean markets sick, tired, and near death, resale prices were lower. Leyland’s ships usually sold first in Barbados, St. Vincent, and the easternmost Caribbean islands. These were the Caribbean islands closest to West Africa. If no buyers were found in these markets, ships sailed 1,200 miles further west to Jamaica. The onward sail to Jamaica was always a risk because the longer Leyland held his captives, the more would die each day. As Leyland wrote to Captain Wilson: “Rather than accept of a low average [in Barbados] for a choice cargo, by all means proceed to Jamaica.[10] The longer he held his human merchandise of “choice cargo,” the lower its value. “Choice cargo” – be they human, fruit, or wheat to Leyland – all required fast turnaround and resale to maximize profit before they all spoiled.
Leyland timed his voyages and adjusted the ship’s contents in response to his predictions of market demand. Cotton prices and slave prices fluctuated seasonally. For some voyages, it was more profitable to exchange slaves for Caribbean cotton and rum, particularly if cotton was selling for high prices in British markets. For other voyages, promissory notes were preferable. For instance, as Leyland wrote to Captain Wilson on December 9, 1786: “We wish you to fill the ship with cotton of good quality if it can be got cheap, the present high prices cannot continue and we beg you will not agree to take any other produce on any consideration, so much money is likely to be lost by it.” [11]
The trade was immensely profitable. For instance, in the 1792-93 voyage of the Jenny, Leyland bought 5,940 yards of colorful printed cotton fabric from Manchester worth £234, or about £1 per 25 yards of fabric. When bartering fabric for slaves, the initial exchange price was suggested as just 25 yards of fabric, or the equivalent value of just £1.  That is, goods were purchased on the cheap in European markets and exchanged for profit in African markets.
By contrast, while Leyland suggested buying a slave for the equivalent of just £1, suggested resale values began at £46 in Caribbean markets. That is, slaves were sold for up to 46 times more than they were purchased. This voyage alone, based on purchasing slaves for £234 worth of fabric, yielded a gross income £13,500 from the sale of these same slaves. Of this £13,500, most went to labor costs, materials, and paying the captain and crew. The remaining ~£4,000 was Leyland’s profit

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Associate of Thomas Leyland Sir Michael Cromie & Co.’s Ten-Guinea Promissory Note: “Promise to pay to Mr. Peter Robinsen [sic.] or bearer on demand TEN GUINEAS, after received LIVERPOOL 29 day of July 1801” [12]

3. Slave Financing: Selling slaves motivated Leyland to experiment with innovative new financial products and modern forms of finance.

At sale, slaves could be exchanged for rum, cotton, sugar, cash – or as Leyland increasingly used – promissory notes. A single slave might be exchanged one ton or more of cotton. A full slave ship might be exchanged for more cotton than could possibly fit on the return ship home. Therefore, exchange of slaves for more liquid cash and hard currency was preferable. Some Caribbean buyers had the money to do this; others did not.
Leyland therefore secured letters of promise. The ship manifest recorded the names of who bought slaves, the quantity purchased, and the price paid for each. Those without cash on hand, signed a promissory note with the number and value of slaves they purchased. The promissory notes, like the one showed above, was basically a check. But unlike a modern check, Leyland did not present the promissory note at his own bank. He instead presented the check at the London or Liverpool bank of the person from whom he purchased the slaves. This bank would verify if the check was valid and draw from their customer’s funds to give to Leyland. Leyland had to trust these letters were good, and that British corporations like Baillie & Co. would make good on their promise to refund. Trust was key. For instance, as Leyland wrote to Charles Wilson on August 31, 1788: “If you should be obliged to go to Jamaica you may apply to Messrs. Hibbert & Co as well as to Mr. Lindo, because their house in London will accept their bills.”[13]
Shortage of specie currency in the Caribbean and dangers of transporting money over long distances motivated Leyland to rely on handshake agreements, promissory notes, and checks in lieu of hard currency. However, there must have been many cases of buyers with bad credit histories. As Leyland warned Captain Wilson in December 1786: “Be very particularly in your agreements with the house who sells your cargo, of by that means all disputes or any disappointment may be avoided.”[14] Leyland must have learned the dangers of promissory notes from hard experience. For instance, in August 1788, he wrote to Joseph Barton who had taken goods from Leyland without payment: “I now enclose Captain Swainston’s protest, which I hope will enable you to settle the average on the ship. [….] Favor me with these accounts as soon as possible.”[15] Later in September 1788, with still no payments made, Leyland again scolded Barton: “I much fear after payment of the bond debts.”[16]
Promissory notes were also loans. For instance, a buyer could draw up a letter promising to pay, even if there was not enough money in his bank account at that time to make good the payment. Before entering banking, Leyland experimented with using slaves as collateral on loans. In short, the planter agreed to repay him in increments of 6, 12, or 18 months later, based on future profits.[17]
This practice allowed buyers to speculate on slaves, to buy slaves with money they did not have, and to pay off the slave debt with future profits from slave labor. In other words, slaves became collateral on loans and could be taken back by creditors over unpaid debt.
Captain Wilson had a lot of responsibility: to buy slaves, transport them, draw up legally binding sale documents, and help Leyland collect loan payment from British banks. In an age before credit scores and modern banks, Leyland’s financial system relied on building long-term business relationships, handshake agreements, gossip, and word of mouth. Most of all, Leyland’s system relied on trust. If a slave buyer did not have enough money, could Leyland trust to loan him money?
The size of an ocean allowed Leyland to comfortably collect profits from captives he never saw or met. Leyland’s letters distanced him from site of his crimes. Slavery and death became abstract to Leyland, reduced to mere numbers and tick marks on a page. But this same ocean made communication and reimbursement difficult. London merchants had to commit to buying slaves in Caribbean markets they never saw. Liverpool slavers had to hand the day-to-day responsibility of managing a ship to captains like Charles Wilson, who could disappear while at sea during months without contact. Caribbean buyers had to buy slaves and draw up promissory notes, hoping there was enough money in London markets to cash the notes.

Thomas Leyland [18]

Leyland associate Christopher Bullin [19]

4. Leyland Turned Benefactor and Banker: Leyland used profits and skills learned from the slave trade to fund charitable works and create his bank. Within weeks of the slave trade becoming illegal, Leyland “laundered” the dirty profits from slavery into the clean and legal profits of global finance.

As slave records reveal, there was financial risk at each stage of the journey. In response to risk, Leyland was strategic. He was co-investor in several ships at a time. If any one adventure failed or sunk at sea, his investments were not all in one place. He left an extensive paper trail to record who had paid him, and who had not. His most useful tool, however, was the promissory note. Skills to manage risk, collect payment, and transport goods all equipped him with skills for the next stage of his career: from the dirty trade of slavery to the “clean” trade of banking.
Leyland later turned to public service, charitable works, and elected office. He made it is his life’s work to stamp out the unethical business practices of other Liverpool merchants in the public market stalls. As one biographer described Leyland:
There was no more strenuous supporter of the rights of the people against the oppression of the middleman than Thomas Leyland. Whether he remembered his own early struggles, or whether his sense of justice was keen, we do not know. But for the engrosser, the forestaller, the regrater he had no mercy. He, during his mayoralty of the memorable year 1814-15, made his name a terror to these evil-doers. Thomas Leyland was accustomed to visit the markets personally, and brought to justice those guilty of these offences.[20]
How do we reconcile Leyland the human trafficker responsible for thousands of deaths with his reputation as a “strenuous supporter of the rights of the people against the oppression”? Was Leyland aware of this irony? Probably not. Leyland likely never thought of his actions as wrong and immoral. Instead, it probably never occurred to him that his African captives had humanity. It remains, however, near impossible to intuit Leyland’s psychology and intentions from his records that survive. What remains clear, though, is the desire for profit.
Leyland’s letters convey a keen sense of the protestant work ethic, of frugality, of following up with customers for even the smallest expenses, and of reimbursing employees and partners for anything he owed them. In an age before standard modern banking, and in a time when most Liverpool merchants borrowed from each other, Leyland’s reputation in the community was key. A good standing in the community made for good business and built up a reputation as trustworthy. As Hughes and Rankin describe, most early Liverpool banks started as no more than a desk and ledger in a merchant’s back office:
Our predecessors were frugal, too. It was told of the above Mr. Leyland that when the Bank was in York Street and he one winter’s evening in his dwelling-house next door, a customer was ushered in. The old gentleman who was sitting in darkness assumed that the purpose of the call was to bank some belated cash, and promptly lit a candle. Finding, however, that the client had only come to discuss a loan in private, he said: ‘Ah, well, we can quite as well talk that over in the dark,’ and promptly blew the candle out.[21]
After abolition of Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1806, Leyland used profits from slave sales to establish Leyland & Bullins Bank in 1807. His partner was his nephew and fellow slave ship merchant Richard Bullin. Leyland & Bullins operated continuously in Liverpool as an independent and family-owned bank. Leyland & Bullins was then acquired in 1901 by North & South Wales Bank, which was in turn acquired by the London Joint City & Midland Bank in 1908. From about 1918 to 1934, Midland ranked as the world’s largest bank by number of customer deposits. Midland Bank built its headquarters opposite the street from the Bank of England.  Midland Bank, sitting on the edge of bankruptcy in 1992, was in turn acquired by the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.
Two centuries after slavery, the records of Leyland & Bullins are now stored in the buried archives of HSBC.[22] At each stage of the journey, money moved from account to account and bank to bank. But trace back the chain of ownership and find the slave sale that first made this wealth possible. As the conversation continues on reparations for slavery, the question remains: What is the responsibility of companies today to pay reparations for slavery?

Timeline

  • 1783:  Leyland’s first slave voyage
  • 1806:  Leyland’s last slave voyage; Transatlantic Slave Trade abolished
  • 1807:  Leyland & Bullins created with slave trade profits
  • 1901:  Merged with North & South Wales Bank
  • 1908:  Merged with Midland Bank
  • 1992:  Merged with HSBC
  • Today:  The records from Leyland’s slave trading and banking operations are stored in the archives of HSBC’s British headquarters

Endnotes

[1] John Hughes, “Chapter XIV: Leyland and Bullins,” in Liverpool Banks & Bankers, 1760-1837: A history of the circumstances which gave rise to the industry and of the men who founded and developed it (London: Henry Young & Sons, 1906), pp.169-82.

[2] Biography of Thomas Leyland by British Online Archives.

[3] Sowande’ M. Muskateem, “Imagined Bodies,” in Slavery at Sea: Terror, Sex, and Sickness in the Middle Passage (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2016), pp. 36-54.

[4] W.P. Gray, “Watercolour of the offices of Leyland and Bullins in Liverpool, UK,” Digital Collections of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, accessed April 10, 2023, https://history.hsbc.com/collections/global-archives/leyland-and-bullins/records-relating-to-bank-buildings-2/1703841.

[5] Letter from Thomas Leyland to James Baillie of Grenada, August 13, 1788, folio 732 (page 779), accessed through Liverpool Record Office.

[6] Letter from Thomas Leyland to cloth manufacturer Mr. Rawhuson of Manchester, March 18 to 20, 1788, folio 596 (page 643).

[7] Thomas Leyland Company account books for the Jenny’s 1789-1790 voyage, University of Michigan: William L. Clements Library.

[8] Thomas Leyland Company account books for the Jenny 1792-1793, University of Michigan: William L. Clements Library.

[9] Ibid., Hannah.

[10] Letter from Thomas Leyland to Captain Charles Wilson, August 31, 1788, folio 755 (page 802).

[11] Letter from Thomas Leyland to Charles Wilson, December 9, 1786, folio 202 (page 249).

[12] Letter from Thomas Leyland to Captain Charles Wilson, August 31, 1788, folio 755 (page 802).

[13] “Sir Michael Cromie & Co.’s Ten-Guinea Promissory Note,” in Liverpool Banks & Bankers, 1760-1837, pp.160.

[14] Joshua D. Rothman, “Chapter 1: Origins 1789-1815,” in The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America (New York: Basic Books, 2021), pp. 9-13.

[15] Letter from Thomas Leyland to Charles Wilson, December 9, 1786, folio 202 (page 249).

[16] Letter from Thomas Leyland to William Barton of Barbados & Joseph Barton of London, August 9, 1788, folio 726 (page 773).

[17] Letter from Thomas Leyland to William Barton of Barbados & Joseph Barton of London, September 11, 1788, folio 777 (page 824).

[18] Letter from Thomas Leyland to Charles Wilson, August 4, 1788, folio 718 (page 765).

[19] Artist unkown, “Portrait of Thomas Leyland,” in Liverpool Banks & Bankers, 1760-1837, pp. 168.

[20] Ibid., “Portrait of Christopher Bullin,” pp. 174.

[21] John Hughes, “Thomas Leyland,” in Liverpool Banks & Bankers, 1760-1837, pp.174.

[22] John Rankin, “Chapter XVI: Retrospective and Discursive Reminiscences of Commercial Liverpool Sixty Years Ago,” in A History of our Firm Being some account of the firm of Pollock, Gilmour & Co. and its offshoots and connections 1804-1920, Liverpool: Henry Young & Sons Limited, 1921).

[23] “About this Collection of Leyland & Bullins,” Digital Collections of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, accessed April 10, 2023, https://history.hsbc.com/collections/global-archives/leyland-and-bullins.

St. Paul’s Cathedral Dome: a synthesis of engineering and art

Developed with James Campbell, architectural historian at the University of Cambridge
Inspired by taking George Deodatis’ lectures on The Art of Structural Design
at Columbia University’s Department of Civil Engineering

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In 1872, Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, the French author and architect celebrated for restoring Notre-Dame of Paris, wrote in his Lectures on Architecture that the form of the Gothic cathedral was the synthesis of the early Christian basilica and the Romanesque three-aisled church. In this analysis, Viollet-le-Duc reasoned that a thesis (early Christian) plus an antithesis (Romanesque) produced the synthesis (Gothic).

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Animation from Stephen Murray

Although the history and origins of Gothic are more complex than Viollet-le-Duc’s formula, this formula provides a method to dissect the Renaissance and Enlightenment counterpart to the medieval cathedral: the Greco-Roman basilica, as embodied by St. Paul’s Cathedral, constructed from 1675 to 1711 by Christopher Wren (1632-1723). St Paul’s is a symbol of Enlightenment-era London, built to rival its medieval counterpart of Westminster Abbey.
In this essay, and in my analysis of this neoclassical cathedral, I will parallel Viollet-le-Duc’s analysis of the medieval church. The thesis is that St. Paul’s is a work of techno-scientific engineering. The antithesis is that this building is a work of art that speaks to the larger cultural moment of Enlightenment London. The synthesis is the dome of St. Paul’s that merges these two forces of engineering and art into a unified and impressive creation.

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Thesis: ENGINEERING
The engineering of this dome is more complex than meets the eye.

In this animated construction sequence, view how the dome was engineered.

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Music from the organ (William Tell’s Overture) and bells of St Paul’s (recorded 2013)

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St. Paul’s Cathedral features an innovative triple dome structure. On the circular drum, the inner dome rises and is visible from the cathedral interior. Above this inner dome, a brick cone rises to support the 850 ton lantern. This brick cone also supports the wood rafters and frame of the outer dome, which is covered in wood and lead. This three dome system allows the cathedral to support such a heavy lantern, all the while maintaining the great height needed to be a visible London landmark.
  • Inner dome – visible from inside and purely for show; height 225 ft (69m)
  • Middle brick cone – a brick cone that is invisible from below but supports the 850 ton lantern above; height 278 ft (85m)
  • Outer dome – a wood and lead-roofed structure visible from the cathedral exterior; height 278 ft (85m)
  • Lantern – an 850 ton stone lantern and cross, whose weight is carried to the ground via the middle brick cone 365ft (111m)
The inner and outer domes are decorative, while the brick cone is the true weight-bearing support. The model below is created from measured plans and is accurate to reality.

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Virtual Reality Model
(click to play)

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The cathedral in the city: Rhinebeck Panorama of London dated 1806-07

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Antithesis: ART
The cathedral’s location and design reflects its cultural-historical moment of the Enlightenment.

The 1666 Fire of London turned the thirteenth-century medieval cathedral of old St. Paul’s into a charred ruin. As masons demolished the ancient ruins, the opportunity arose to erect a new cathedral designed around new cultural reference points: neoclassical instead of medieval, Protestant instead of Catholic, and with steel and brick instead of stone alone. St. Paul’s reveals what was, for the time, novel ways of thinking about space.
There are three main ways this cathedral architecture reflected its time period.
Firstly, this cathedral embodied an emerging understanding of artist and architectural space.  The burned medieval cathedral was built over centuries by numerous masons in collaboration, whose names are forgotten. New St. Paul’s was built in one uninterrupted sweep by a single architect, whose name and biography are known in detail. It was only during the Renaissance and Enlightenment that society began to think of art and architecture as the product of an individual artist’s personality and ambitions. The engineer, artist, and architect were elevated above nameless masons. Historians can describe the relationship between artist and artwork with a degree of detail impossible to attribute to the architects of older, medieval cathedrals. It is to this period in the history of science and philosophy that historians also attribute the cult of personality surrounding individual artistic genius. Also central to the Enlightenment period was the organization and standardization of all human knowledge into encyclopedias and libraries, much in the way that St. Paul’s was centrally planned, designed, and coordinated with more precision than survived from the sporadic organization of medieval cathedrals and monastic libraries.

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Comparative cross sections of old (left) and new (right) St. Paul’s (link)

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The irony is that for a building that appeared modern to eighteenth-century eyes, the construction methods with scaffolding and wooden winches to lift heavy stones were mostly unchanged from centuries before. The wooden rafters inside the cathedral roof are from trees planted hundreds of years before during the High Middle Ages. Most telling of all, the vaults of the nave and choir are supported by medieval-style flying buttresses. Fearing that flying buttress – an engineering technique deeply associated medieval architecture – would be inappropriate to a classical basilica, Wren hid these buttresses behind a screen wall. Modern or medieval? The building methods and religious traditions largely descended from late medieval methods, even if the building exterior evoked an opposed classical tradition.
Secondly, this cathedral reflected Britain’s growing interest in European and world affairs. Merchant ships sailing up the River Thames would first see the domes of Wren’s Greenwich Hospital for the wounded and retired sailors in the British navy; around the next bend in the river, the dome of St. Paul’s came into view. With Britain competing with France for colonial power, Wren visited Les Invalides, the Paris hospital for retired sailors in the French navy. Through studying Les Invalides and reviewing prints of French architecture, Wren copied and improved on classical traditions when redesigning London after the fire. St. Paul’s is also similar to Michelangelo’s sixteenth-century dome at the Vatican. St. Paul’s was supposed to be a cathedral, but its dome became an act of one-upsmanship against similar and existing domes in Paris and Rome.

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The River Thames with St. Paul’s Cathedral
(painted by Canaletto c.1747-48)

London from Greenwich Park
(painted by Turner in 1809)

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Lastly, this religious architecture ironically symbolized the growing power of secular thought and finance over national governance. As capital of England, London’s architectural focal points are split geographically between Westminster to the west and central London to the east. Power in Westminster is, in turn, divided between three main architectural points of interest: Westminster Abbey (symbolizing God), Buckingham Palace (symbolizing the king), and the Houses of Parliament (whose House of Commons symbolizes the country). This maps onto the neat triad of “God, King, and Country” or the three estates of “clergy, nobility, and commoners.”
However, the location of St. Paul’s, in the center of London’s financial district and near the commercial hub of the Royal Exchange, competed with Westminster Abbey in size and height. It were as if the commercial interests of bourgeois merchants and industrialists working in central London were competing with and questioning the traditional balance of power between the king, clergy, and nobility that had excluded the merchant middle classes from power. It was as if this cathedral’s architecture asserted the growing importance of London’s businesses and financial district for the governance of a country. Fittingly, as if proof of their success, zoning laws and building height restrictions in much of London are still designed for miles around so as to preserve the visibility of St. Paul’s. Wren was no opponent to the monarchy, and the construction of St. Paul’s, in fact, benefited from royal support. Nonetheless, the architecture still speaks to the eighteenth-century tension between ancient traditions and modern technologies.

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Protected vistas radiating out from Westminster and St. Paul’s. The cathedral architecture becomes, in equal parts, the symbolic, physical, and cartographic center of urban life, as if the red lines on these maps were arrows directing our gaze to the center of power.

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Construction was funded through a tax on the coal London residents and businesses consumed. In later years, coal became a polarizing symbol of both the dirty, soot-covered injustices of urban poverty and the techno-scientific progress fueling Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Fittingly, the same dark ingredient that powered Britain’s industrial looms and colonial power also funded construction of the cathedral that came to symbolize London and the empire. St. Paul’s is a church, but its neoclassical design and secular location allow it to become much more than just a church.

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Synthesis: ENGINEERING AND ART
This dome is a synthesis of art and engineering.

In addition to St. Paul’s political and cultural symbolism, this dome also synthesized the most recent advances in building (industrially manufactured brick) with simultaneous techno-scientific discoveries. This cathedral embodied the core beliefs of European Enlightenment thought: the application of science to advance society and the synthesis of Greco-Roman aesthetic traditions with modern technologies.

Parabolic behavior of an unweighted chain

In the years St. Paul’s was under construction, Wren corresponded with his polymath, scientist, and mathematician friend Robert Hooke (1635-1703). From Hooke’s empirical experiments with springs, strings, and weights (see Hooke’s Law), he confirmed that an unweighted chain suspended between two points would form a parabolic curve. Furthermore, the quadratic formula Y = X2 mathematically expressed and modeled the chain’s behavior. Math and reality were, in one formula, linked.
There is effectively no limit to how much weight a chain can hold in tension. A suspension bridge roadway weighs hundreds of thousands of tons, but the steel cables suspending it are usually no thicker than a few centimeters. However, these cables will collapse under the slightest amount of compression.
In contrast to a chain that is strong under tension but weak under compression, stone is the opposite: strong under compression but weak under tension. Imagine the incredible compressive forces of the earth’s crust that compress ancient sand and fossils into solid limestone. When masons quarried this stone into blocks, they were challenged to design cathedrals that minimized any tension on stone. Tension in the horizontal span of the cathedral vault, for instance, caused structural collapse. In response, masons devised flying buttresses and complex structural interventions to prevent stone from cracking under tension.
The genius of Enlightenment architects like Wren stems from their ability to deduce: If a suspended chain formed a parabolic curve in pure tension as modeled by Y = X2, then the converse statement must also be true: A stone arch modeled on a parabolic curve would act in pure compression, as modeled by the reverse equation -Y = X2. Thus, by mathematical logic, the downward and tensile force of chains mirrored the upward and compressive forces of stone. Spanish architect Antoni Guadí (1852-1926) observed similar phenomena when designing his final project, the Basilica of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona (begun 1883). Without the benefit of computer models, Guadí suspended weighted strings from the ceiling and then viewed these creations in a mirror, so as to deduce the optimal geometric form for his cathedral vaults.

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One of Gaudí’s string structures

The same structure upside down
models the form of the ideal dome

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Knowing this, Wren constructed the dome as a brick cone similar in shape to a parabolic arch. Around the base of the dome, where the buckling forces of tension were greatest, Wren inserted bands of steel chain the circumference of the dome. Medieval masons intuited this, too, when they designed pointed arches whose shape was somewhat closer to a parabola than was the traditional and older Roman arch. However, while medieval masons at places like Amiens Cathedral relied on trial and error with few benefits of scientific thought, Wren relied on science and math to deduce the ideal form. Thus, the brick middle dome is only nine inches thick, but it supports a lantern above that weighs 850 tons.
Wren was more than a mathematician. He also had a keen aesthetic eye from close study of French and classical architecture. His white limestone buildings all drew inspiration from the classical traditions of Greece and Rome. However, although the brick cone was cheaper, stronger, and used fewer materials than a traditional stone dome, Wren knew that a brick architectural form was too radically modern to leave exposed, and too aesthetically different from the otherwise neoclassical church. Wren therefore hid the true, weight-bearing brick cone. Outside the brick cone, Wren added a lead and wood roof that supported no weight and was in no way connected to the lantern it seemed to support. Inside the brick cone, which was too steep and too tall to paint a convincing ceiling mural on, Wren erected a decorative arched vault within that was merely a decorative surface for James Thornhill’s paintings.
Art and engineering, religion and politics, tradition and innovation were, through the design of one dome, linked. Wren might not have intended to inject his cultural-historical moment into the design. As an architect-engineer, he was inventing the most stable and economic way to cover the cathedral. However, the implications of this engineering reflected the spirit of the city and society at large.

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What’s wrong with Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon?

Animation and research as featured by Open Culture

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Postmodernist thinkers, like Michel Foucault, interpret Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, invented c.1790, as a symbol for surveillance and the modern surveillance state.
This lecture is in two parts. I present a computer model of the panopticon, built according to Bentham’s instructions. I then identify design problems with the panopticon and with the symbolism people often give it.

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Related Projects

– Computer animation of Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon
View the panopticon in virtual reality
Explore about Eastern State Penitentiary, a building inspired by Bentham

Computer Model of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon

Created at the University of Cambridge: Department of Architecture
As part of my Master’s thesis in Architecture and Urban Studies, as featured by:
– Special Collections department at University College London
– Open Culture
– Tomorrow City
– Aeon: a world of ideas
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To say all in one word, it [the panopticon] will be found applicable, I think, without exception, to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection.
– Jeremy Bentham
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Since the 1790s, Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon remains an influential building and representation of power relations. Yet no structure was ever built to the exact dimensions Bentham indicates in his panopticon letters. Seeking to translate Bentham into the digital age, I followed his directions and descriptions to construct an exact model in virtual reality. What would this building have looked like if it were built? Would it have been as all-seeing and all-powerful as Bentham claims?
Explore Bentham’s panopticon in the animation above or in virtual reality below
based on Bentham’s drawings at University College London:

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c.1791 plans of panopticon, drawn by architect Willey Reveley for Jeremy Bentham

Creative Commons image credit: Bentham MS Box 119a 121, UCL Special Collections

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Panopticon: Theory vs. Reality

Central to Bentham’s proposed building was a hierarchy of: (1) the principal guard and his family; (2) the assisting superintendents; and (3) the hundreds of inmates. The hierarchy between them mapped onto the building’s design. The panopticon thus became a spatial and visual representation of the prison’s power relations. As architectural historian Robin Evans describes: “Thus a hierarchy of three stages was designed for, a secular simile of God, angels and man.”

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Author’s images from computer model

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To his credit, Bentham recognized that an inspector on the ground floor could not see all inmates on the upper floors. The angle of view was too steep and obstructed by stairs and walkways. To this end, Bentham proposed that a covered inspection gallery be erected between every two floors of cells.
By proposing these three inspection galleries, Bentham addressed the problem of inspecting all inmates. However, he created a new problem: From no central point was it now be possible to see all activity, as the floor plans below show. The panoramic view below shows the superintendent’s actual field of view, from which he could see into no more than four complete cells at a time. The view from the center was not, in fact, all-seeing. Guards would have to walk a continuous circuit round-and-round, as if on a treadmill. They, too, are prisoners to the architecture.

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Author’s images from computer model

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The intervening stairwells and inspection corridors between the perimeter cells and the central tower might have allowed inspectors to see into the cells. Yet these same architectural features would also have impeded the inmates’ view toward the central rotunda. Bentham claimed this rotunda could become a chapel, and that inmates could hear the sermon and view the religious ceremonies without ever needing to leave their cells. The blinds, normally closed, could be opened up for viewing the chapel.

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Bentham’s suggestion was problematic. The two cross sections above show that, although some of the inmates could see the chapel from their cells, most would be unable to do so.
In spite of all these obvious faults in panopticon design, Bentham still claimed that all inmates and activities were visible and controlled from a single central point. When the superintendent or visitor arrives, no sooner is he announced that “the whole scene opens instantaneously to his view,” Bentham wrote.

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Despite Bentham’s claims to have invented a perfect and all-powerful building, the real panopticon would have been flawed were it built as this data visualization helps illustrate. Although the circular form with central tower was chosen to facilitate easier surveillance, the realities and details of this design illustrate that constant surveillance was not possible. That the British public and Parliament rejected Bentham’s twenty year effort to build a real panopticon should be no surprise.
However flawed the architecture, Bentham remained ahead of his time. He envisioned an idealistic and rational, even utopian, surveillance society. Without the necessary (digital) technology to create this society, Bentham fell back on architecture to make this society possible. The failure of this architecture and its obvious shortcomings do not invalidate Bentham’s project. Instead, these flaws with architecture indicate that Bentham envisioned an institution and society that would only become possible through new technologies invented hundreds of years later.

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Related Projects

My computer model is available here in virtual reality.
Read my research on Eastern State Penitentiary, a radial prison descended from Bentham’s panopticon

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Credits

Supervised by Max Sternberg at Cambridge, advised by Philip Schofield at UCL
The archives and publications of UCL special collections, Bentham MS Box 119a 121

Audio narration by Tamsin Morton
Audio credits from Freesound
panopticon interior ambiance
panopticon exterior ambiance
prison door closing
low-pitched bell sound
high-pitched bell sound

You may reuse content and images from this article, according to the Creative Commons license.

24 Hours in the London Underground

Audio effect: Heartbeat from Freesound

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Through analyzing 25,440 data points collected from 265 stations, this animation visualizes commuting patterns in the London Underground over two weeks in 2010.
Each colored dot is one underground station. The dots pulsate larger and smaller in mathematical proportion to the number of riders passing through. Big dots for busy stations. Small dots for less busy stations.
Dot color represents the lines serving each station. White dots are for stations where three or more lines intersect. Each dot pulsates twice in a day: Once during the morning commute; and again during the evening commute.
By syncing the audio volume with the density of riders and the background color with the time of day, the animation becomes acoustically legible. The audio volume rises and falls to mirror the growth and contraction of each colored dot during the daily commute.

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The rhythmic pulsing of commuters is analogous to the breathing human body. The passage of red blood cells from the lungs to the organs is analogous to the movement of people to and from the city’s own heart: the downtown commercial district. This analogy of human form to city plan is a longstanding theme in urban studies.
See my film about commuting patterns in the NYC subway.

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The Data

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Method

No single data set could capture the complexity of a metropolis like London. This animation is based off of open-access data collected in November 2010. According to Transport for London: “Passenger counts collect information about passenger numbers entering and exiting London Underground stations, largely based on the Underground ticketing system gate data.” Excluding London Overground, the Docklands Light Railways, National Rail, and other transport providers, there are 265 London Underground stations surveyed. For data collection purposes, stations where two or more lines intersect are counted as a single data entry. This is to avoid double-counting a single passenger who is just transferring trains in one station en route to their final destination.

Every fifteen minutes, the numbers of passengers entering the system are tallied. This yields 96 time intervals per day (4 x 24). Multiplying the number of time intervals (96) by the number of stations (265), we get the number of data points represented in this animation: 25,440. Each station was assigned:

  • A location on the map of latitude and longitude
  • A color according to the lines extant in 2010: Bakerloo, Central, Circle, District, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria, Waterloo & City.
  • A circle scaled to reflect the number of passengers moving through. Stations range in business from a few hundred passengers to over 100,000 per day.
  • A time of day: each 15-minute interval becomes one image in this film. Overlaying these 96 “snapshots” of commuter movement creates  a time-lapse animation. Thus, a single day with 25,440 data points is compressed into a mere 8 seconds.

Sources

Station Coordinates: Chris Bell. “London Stations.” doogal.co.uk (link)
Ridership Statistics: Transport for London. “Our Open Data.” (link)
Click on the section “Network Statistics” to view “London Underground passenger counts data.”

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Powered by TfL Open Data. Contains OS data© Crown copyright and database rights 2016.

Evolution of the English Country House

Developed with Paul Barnwell, historian at the University of Oxford

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Music: Piano Trio in E Flat, Op. 100 by Franz Schubert

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This animation traces changes to English country house design between 1660 and 1715. In 1660, the typical Elizabethan style country house was compact, fortified, and square. By 1715, the emerging Baroque and Palladian country house was spread out, less compact, and better integrated into the rural landscape. The gardens became an extension of the house. This animation illustrates the aesthetic and architectural changes during this era.

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Burford Church Construction Sequence

This project is also featured on Burford Church’s official website.
Created with the late Cathy Oakes, medieval art historian at the University of Oxford

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Construction Sequence: 1175-1475

While studying history at Oxford University, I based my final research project on Burford Church near Oxford, England. With the generous help from Cathy Oakes, I visited this humble parish church and recreated its 300 year construction and evolution through a computer model. View the resulting animation above or download the digital source files for free at this link. Narration below:

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  • c.1175 – Work begins on the Norman church working from east to west.
    It is a simple structure with round Norman windows and a choir, nave, and tower.
  • c.1200 – Demolition to construct a chapel, aisle, and entrance foyer.
  • c.1250 – Addition of north and south transept. Chancel is expanded.
  • c.1400 – The crypt is added, and the tower is heightened. The architectural style changes from Norman to Gothic, from round arches to pointed. Local cloth merchants construct a separate guild chapel at a slight angle to the main church.
  • c.1475 – Guild chapel is demolished to build the Lady Chapel. Most of the remaining nave is demolished to construct two new aisles, a larger west window, and new clerestory windows. Two chapels are added to either side of the choir, as well as a three floor entrance tower (not visible from this angle).
  • This completes the construction of Burford Church.

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Visual Analysis

What is the visual language of Burford Church? What aspects of medieval social history can be deduced from the church decoration? Without written historical records, building fragments alone can tell the story of church construction.
Here is my tour of the architectural fabric.

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