UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES THE CITY THE CITY INTO THE CORPORATION, ITS LIVERY COMPANIES, AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF THEIR CHARITIES AND ENDOWMENTS BY WILLIAM GILBERT AUTHOR OF "CONTRASTS," ETC. LONDON DALDY, ISBISTER & CO. 56, LUDGATE HILL 1877 LONDON : PRINTED BY VIRTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY ROAD. CONTENTS. CHAPTEB PACK I. INTHODUCTORY 1 c/3 II. DEMOLITION OF THE DWELLINGS OF THE WORKING CLASSES . . 24 2: III. Cmr PAROCHIAL CHARITIES 42 IV. LIVERY COMPANIES G7 5 Q V. LIVERY COMPANIES (continued) 92 (M z VI. LIYERY COMPANIES (continued) 122 VII. LIVERY COMPANIES THEIR DUTIES, ETC. . . . 149 VIII. LIVERY COMPANIES THEIR REVENUE . 176 IX. THE CORPORATION . . . '. . . .208 ' -r* X. CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES 239 UJ co XI. CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES (continued) .... 272 XII. CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS 304 XIII. ENDOWED SCHOOLS . . . . . . . 329 XIV. CONCLUSION . . 363 CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY. FROM the numerous books which, from, time to time, have been written respecting the abuses and anoma- lies to be found in the administration of affairs in the City of London, the reader may naturally look upon another bearing on the same subject as a work of super- erogation. Upon further investigation, however, he may, as we have done, arrive at the conclusion that, glaring as have been the defects already brought under the notice of the public, others may be quoted equally grave which have hitherto been passed over with comparatively little censure. But even if the present venture has but scant claim to originality of subject, it has been the .earnest endeavour of the author to treat it in a manner somewhat different from the works already alluded to, so as, if possible, to attract the attention of the reader, if from no better reason than its novelty alone. When others have written on the abuses existing in the muni- cipality of the City of London, especially those which are to be detected in the application of the funds in the possession of the livery companies or trade guilds, B 2 THE CITY AS IT IS. they are generally answered by replies so full of legal quibbles and plausible sophistries that the imagination of the reader becomes fatigued before he has been able to arrive at any settled conclusion; and the subject gra- dually fades from his mind, or at any rate it loses all its interest. Even with those authors who treat the subject from a moral or religious point of view, the result is in general but little better. With the exception of the Rev. William Rogers, rector of St. Botolph, Bishops- gate, and one or two others of the clergy, that body, which ought to consider themselves the natural guar- dians of the rights of the poor, seem, as a rule, entirely indifferent to the subject, and the abuses of the City charitable endowments, both parochial and corporate, remain undisturbed, while those interested in the pre- sent state of things point to the apathy of the clergy as a proof that the administration of these charities leaves nothing to be desired. The novelty mentioned as the great characteristic of our treatment of the subject is simply as follows. Instead of attempting to prove the injustice inflicted on the inhabitants of the metropolis in general and the poor in particular by legal arguments, as from his ignorance of the law the author might, by the attempt, do more harm than good to the cause in which he is so deeply interested, he proposes to place before the reader some of the results of our metropolitan civic legislation, prefaced by a short description of some of the acts of the Corporation during the last five-and-twenty years, and the results which have accrued from them, thus INTRODUCTION. 3 leaving the reader to judge of the tree by its fruits. Should he approve of the results of the (City) legisla- tion as they will be spread truthfully before him, no harm will be done to him or to us, as from a simple statement of facts there is little room for legal sophistry to develop itself. If, on the contrary, he should be convinced, as we trust he will be, that the grossest in- justice has been inflicted not only upon the metropolitan community at large, especially Christ's legatees, the poor, it is hoped that his honest expression of indig- nation will not be the sole result, but that he will endeavour to assist personally in the movement, which probably will be brought soon before the public, to eradicate or modify the abuses to be found in the muni- cipal legislation of the City of London. In the first place, then, we hold that the government of no capital in the world enjoys a reputation so far above its merits as that of the ancient City of London. That its admirers are many is true ; but the majorit}^ of these, and the most energetic in its praises, are directly or indirectly interested in the continuance of its abuses. Then, again, there are those who behold it from a distance, and being unscathed by its abuses are comparatively indifferent on the subject, and willing to believe anything said in its favour; who, as well as foreigners, accept as established facts the mendacious compliments heaped on its management in speeches by guests at civic feasts, and reported, more or less accu- rately, by the public press. According to the speeches of its flatterers, the City properly so called might be 4 THE CUT AS IT IS. held forward as a model for all other capitals to imitate ; while those Londoners who view it from another point and their name is legion denounce its institutions and their management as being open to the gravest repro- bation. In fact, there is no medium to be found between the description given of it by its admirers and its adver- saries, and yet both parties strenuously assert the truth of their statements, and that with so much courage and energy that it would be unjust to say either was not speaking from honest convictions, though it is clear one side or the other must be in error. Such being the case, it must be obvious that to con- vince either would be an impossibility. At the same time the author, as before stated, considers that there does not exist upon the face of the earth a spot where tyranny and dishonesty are more rampant than in the City of London, or where grosser cruelty or injustice has been, and is now, practised on the poor and indus- trial classes ; that cruelty and injustice increasing in . intensity as the condition in life of the victim is the less able to support it. Nay, more, that these acts of injus- tice are not practised in secret by the class of men who merely possess a second-rate reputation for honesty, but by those City magnates who loudly assert their posses- sion of that virtue, and yet openly set public opinion at defiance their actions in the matter of civic legislation being, as a rule, legalised by our laws. To make the enormous and barefaced injustice prac- tised by our civic authorties stand out in still stronger relief, the reader should some day cast his eye over a . INTRODUCTION. 5 newspaper report when it narrates the proceedings which took place at some City guild feast, and the speeches which were made on the occasion. Would it be possible to compliment the City, its philanthropy, its manage- ment, and its enormous wealth in more eulogistic terms ? The majority of the speeches seem all cast in one mould, their principal ingredient being outrageous flattery on the enlightened and influential body of men the speaker has the honour of addressing, when, per- haps, returning thanks for the high compliment done him (no matter whether prime minister or commander- in-chief, a duke or any other dignitary) in drinking his health. With all this there is a certain amount of the ludicrous mixed up, which goes far to redeem the bad taste of such abject flattery. But when the health of the judges or bishops (and there is generall} 7 " at least one of each invited) is proposed, the case is very different. Then the ludicrous is lost in the painful. No two classes of dignitaries are more respected by the public at large, and our feelings are shocked to find that men of such eminence, and in such professions, should be so employed. Neither the judge nor the bishop seems to have the slightest idea that he has been invited there but to cast an air of justice and morality over proceedings which, if properly investi- gated, would be found to be utterly destitute of both qualifications. Each judge or bishop in his turn seems to be unaware or indifferent to the possibility that the enormous cost of the dinner alone of which he is partaking was obtained 6 THE CIT1'AS IT IS. by means verging, perhaps, on absolute dishonesty, by appropriating funds placed in the hands of the par- ticular guild for trade purposes and charity, when, it may be, there is not a member present who is employed in the trade or craft which bears its name. Let us first state the case of the judge. If the reader will wade through the report of his speech, and give it his cool attention, he must be struck with surprise that a man of education and shrewd observation, as our judges as a rule indisputably are, could listen with calmness and patience to the amount of fulsome adulation " poured into his ear against the stomach of his sense," or how he could, without disgust, swallow the loathsome flat- tery, hot from the mouth of some alderman, with which the toast is larded. " How the proposer is over- whelmed with pride at the honour of bringing the toast placed in his hands under the notice of those assembled ! Would that he could do so in a manner to do it justice, or that it had been placed in abler hands than his ! " The speaker then goes on in the regular stereotyped fashion, laying on his vapid compliments with the usual execrable civic taste, exalting the British judge above all other judges on the face of the earth, at the same time framing his words in such a manner as to insinuate that the practice of taking bribes or giving dishonest judgments was, as a rule, openly prac- tised by the foreign judges with unblushing effrontery. "That our laws were the summit of human wisdom, and were administered by judges who were the envy and admiration of surrounding nations. Rich and INTRODUCTION. 7 poor stood on an equality before them ; the poorest was never deprived of his right to an honest upright judg- ment, nor were the richest and most powerful able to make an English judge swerve from the honest dis- charge of his duties." The answer of the judge to the toast proposing his health is generally in little better taste as to its com- position than the language of the alderman who pro- posed it. Of course he complimented the City of London on the law-abiding spirit of its population, which he could only attribute to its admirable insti- tutions and the example set to the working classes by those who employed them. The virtues of our working classes are then generally mentioned in their turn, and, by way of raising them still higher, a contrast is frequently drawn between them and the working classes in foreign countries of course vastly to the credit of our countrymen and, especially, that we might indeed be proud that those sanguinary scenes which are so common in Paris and other conti- nental cities never occurred among us. The judge might have added, and with perfect truth, that the whole of the City working classes have been driven from it by those who employed them, while the cha- rities they inherited have been torn from them and given, in an enormous majority of cases, to those who were in affluence, or at least above want. Perhaps it may be said that our judges are not cognizant of this foul and dishonest despotism on the part of the Corpo- ration of the City of London and the livery companies, 8 THE CITY AS IT IS. and yet it would be an easy task to name more than one of their number who are or have been members of City companies, and especially those companies which have taken the most active part in such transactions. The part the bishop takes in these proceedings is scarcely less offensive than that of the judge not so much, however, from what he says, as from the painful reminiscences of the indifference shown by the City clergy in allowing others, without opposition, to warp from their original uses the enormous funds left for the benefit of the poor, as well as in allowing the vast endowments existing for their education to be, without a murmur of indignation, either wasted or applied to the benefit of those whose parents are fully able to educate them without encroaching on any charitable funds for the purpose. The phraseology of the rev. lord, however, when returning thanks, ' is generally harmless enough. He reminds his hearers of their responsibilities, both religious and moral; he compli- ments them on the fact that the City is alike the centre of wealth and charity, where the interests of the great producers of wealth the industrial classes are treated with the justice due to them, and their wel- fare, both temporal and spiritual, watched over in a righteous and paternal manner. So far from this being true, the industrial classes and in that term we comprise all those whose earnings do not exceed 200 a year have, on the contrary, been treated with the foulest injustice. Their dwellings, bad enough, it is true, have been demolished, and the tenants have INTRODUCTION. 9 been driven away without one question being asked whither they were going or where they expected to find the shelter of a roof, their oppressors compli- menting themselves that the well-to-do portion of the population would no longer be shocked by the un- sightly scenes which had frequently met their eyes in the particular locality being operated on at the time. A certain City magnate, when questioned as to the present abodes of some hundreds of poor creatures who had lately been ejected from their homes in the vicinity of Bishopsgate Street, replied, " I know nothing at all about them. All I know is, we have got rid of them out of the City ; let those that they are now among make the best of them they can ; we have had enough of them." l^or was there anything extraordinary in this gentleman's remarks ; expressions of the kind are very common in the mouths of your* civic authorities. Yet, after all, bad as the houses were from which these tenants were ejected, they had still, in common with others of the same description, roofs of some sort over them ; and if every room sheltered too many, still it did cover them ; and, in common humanity, some other shelter ought to have been provided for them before they were driven awaj'. Provision of the kind would have been made for them in Paris ; but, perhaps, we may be told, as is frequent in the case of City dinners, that all foreign municipal administration is decidedly inferior to our own, and also utterly corrupt, so we had better leave that part of the subject un- touched. All we maintain is, that before these improve- 10 THE CITY AS IT IS. ments in the City proper or elsewhere were commenced, some shelter ought to have been provided for those about to be ejected ; but such an idea seems never to have entered the heads of the Corporation or livery companies of the City of London. Before we touch on the manifold abuses and iniqui- ties which abound in the City of London, and which, the reader should understand, is the whole space within the City boundaries or walls, it would, perhaps, assist him in forming a better conception of the facts 'about to be placed before him if the author dedicated a few pages to a description of some of the alterations which have of late years taken place, not only in its streets and buildings, but also in its municipal administration, as he will thereby be better able to appreciate the gross acts of injustice which have lately been perpe- trated on the poorer and working classes. It will also assist him in better understanding the gross mass of corruption and dishonesty which, in spite of plau- sible excuses and specious sophisms, is still abundant in it, especially in those departments under the autho- rity of the municipal officials and livery companies. During the first thirty years of the present century, the City, by the great extension of its commercial enterprise and the increase of its wealth, tempted a vast number of strangers, principally of the working classes, to reside in it, till it became in many parts exceedingly overcrowded. At that time the City proper was divided into no fewer than ninety-eight parishes, each maintaining its own poor. Commerce INTRODUCTION. 1 1 and wealth continuing to increase, greater space was of course required for the offices of our City merchants and bankers, and new buildings were erected in a far more magnificent style, as well as of greater dimensions, than those they replaced. One natural result which followed was an enormous increase of the value of land in the City, especially in the neighbourhood of the Bank and the Royal Exchange. It may be easily imagined that the poorer inhabitants residing in the vicinity, who had been ejected from their homes by these alterations, attempted to settle as closely as pos- sible to the spot from which they had been driven, so as to be near to the scene of their daily occupation. Those among them who were the better remunerated for their work generally settled in the streets eastward of the present Post Office and St. Martin's-le-Grrand, or in the neighbourhood near, but principally north of, the City Road. But perhaps the greater number sought for shelter in the neighbourhood of the present Farringdon Street and Road, extending from nearly the City side of the Thames near Blackfriars Bridge to Clerkenwell. The demolition of buildings to erect larger in the City near the Bank produced the most distressing effects in the locality of Farringdon Road. Not only had the population for some years previous increased so rapidly that there was hardly shelter to be found for those it contained ; but when the numbers ejected from the central districts were added, the whole became so crowded together that at length the atten- tion of the public was attracted to it, without, however,. iz THE CITY AS IT IS. for many years making any impression on the civic authorities. Nay, more, it almost seemed that their contempt and indifference to the subject increased in proportion as the misery and degradation of the poor creatures ejected were the greater. But another element entered into the misery and suffering of the overcrowded inhabitants of the Far- ringdon Street district which deserves a special notice. In London, as in all other cities of Europe, apart from private acts of benevolence, are different institutions made for the relief of the poor in times of distress, and no capital in the world possesses richer charitable endowments for the purpose than the City of London. But apart from the City guilds, charitable trusts, and parochial charities, there was also the poor law, and, after all, this was considered the natural means of relief for all those in a state of destitution. In fact, according to its original conception, the poor law might properly be regarded as a regulated almsgiving of the community, at the same time armed with the power of compelling those to give who would other- wise evade their responsibilities to their poorer fellow- citizens. Now London, as before stated, was divided, some forty years ago, into ninety-eight parishes, each parish, beyond its particular charitable endowments and institutions, maintaining its own poor under the action of the poor law. It would therefore, at first sight, appear that the whole of the City poor, although they might be greatly overcrowded, and thereby obliged to live in a dirty and degraded manner, had INTROD UCTION. 1 3 nothing to complain of on the score of want of liber- ality among the rich, Never was there a greater fallacy. More sordid avarice, more cold-blooded cruelty and injustice, than the poor of the overcrowded parishes received from the richer in the distribution of the civic charitable endowments, as well as the poor law as it stood in 1850, could not be found in the municipal history of Europe. More than that, when- ever a poor parish was smarting under some gross act of injustice which had been inflicted on it by a richer, an application was made to the law for redress, and, in nine cases out of ten, judgment was given against the weaker and the poorer. To describe the different acts of injustice practised by the richer parishes upon the poorer would occupy too much space to narrate at any length. A few instances must suffice. For example, the method the rich parish employed, if not habitually, at any rate very frequently, to relieve themselves of their liabili- ties is really worthy of remark, as tending to prove how a humanely-intentioned law could be perverted from its original purposes ; and yet, under the opinion of our law authorities, the injustice perpetrated would be found perfectly legal. Take, for example, any wealthy parish in the centre of the City, in which a poor, broken-down, poverty-stricken creature might, under the then poor law, have applied for a night's lodging ; as a rule, the official Would endeavour to find some excuse for evading the responsibility ; but if the man persisted, he would receive, perhaps, a shilling, with 1 4 THE CITY AS IT IS. the understanding that he should go on to Farringdon Street or any other poor locality, and there demand his night's lodging. It might seem to the reader that the shilling so given would easily have procured the applicant a bed even in the parish he was then in ; but there was another and far stronger reason for sending him farther afield. As the law then stood, in what- ever parish a pauper had last slept, and before he became an incubus on the rates, with a right to perma- nent relief, the parochial authorities were obliged to assist him for the moment, and then, at the cost of the parishioners, to send him to his legal settlement, which occasionally was both difficult and expensive to find, frequently costing from fifty to a hundred pounds, and from this sum the richer parish from which the pauper had received the shilling was exempt, the poorer having to pay the whole. In order to mitigate this cruelty, a law was then passed which formed the City into three unions, each union to maintain its own poor from a common rate. But civic ingenuity was quite equal to the occasion. The guardians of the City unions agreed together to build their wards for the reception of casual paupers at Bow, some five miles distant, and the result was, that when a broken-down tramp received an order for a night's lodging, he rarely reached Bow, but stopped at Whitechapel or some other poor parish on the road, and thus the City was quit of him. Respecting the condition of the City parishes prior to their formation into three unions, the contrasts which INTRODUCTION. 15 might be drawn between the amounts levied for the relief of the poor would occasionally verge closely on the ridi- culous. For example, the parish of St. Michael's, Corn- hill, paid a rate of only one penny in the pound, while another in Farringdon Street paid five shillings. The parish of St. Christopher-le-Stock, containing the Bank of England, paid one-tenth part of a farthing in the pound on an assessment of one half its value, while the parish of St. Ann's, Blackfriars, containing the space between Ludgate Hill and the river- side, paid eight shillings, and the greater part of this amount was levied on persons scarcely above poverty themselves. Nothing was more frequent than for a number of the poorer ratepayers to have lodgers in their rooms who at the moment were in receipt of parochial relief. The amount paid by this unfortunate parish would have reduced it to a state of bankruptcy had it not been for a few large establishments in it, and these, by the way, employed but little labour, and that, as a rule, so well paid as to place them far above the necessity of paro- chial relief. Of these, the Apothecaries' Hall paid 124 per annum direct to the relief of the poor, and the Times newspaper office 240. That our statement that these contrasts sometimes verged on the ridiculous is true, may be shown by the following facts out of many which might be quoted. The parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, containing the Royal Exchange, as well as the Stock Exchange, had, some forty years since, but one pauper, an old man, who was comfortably boarded and lodged some 1 6 THE CITFAS IT IS. twenty miles from town. Of course the parish pos- sessed its board of guardians as well as other parochial officials to look after his welfare, and one of the plea- sant events of each year was to make, formally, an ex- cursion into the country to visit this fortunate pauper, and see that he was cared for in a proper manner. For some years he continued in remarkably robust health, and the board of guardians continued, as in duty bound, their annual visits of inspection, when one day they received the intelligence that their old friend had died suddenly. They most conscientiously lamented the event, though their sorrow was not altogether aroused by the pauper's death nor by the loss of their annual trip. Another element was mixed with it ; for by the law as it then stood, whenever it came to pass that a parish had no poor of its own, it was liable to be joined to some more heavily burdened parish in the same neigh- bourhood. The guardians of the poor of the parish of St. Bartholomew the Great, whose rate did not exceed one penny in the pound, now looked anxiously around them to discover a parishioner poor enough for paro- chial relief. None, however, was to be found, and as a last resource the guardians of St. Bartholomew the Great were driven to the painful necessity of adver- tising for a pauper, though for some time without success. Hundreds of other cruelties and absurdities existed in the administration of the poor law in the City of London prior to the formation of the three City unions. But to narrate them, even shortly, would occupy too INTRODUCTION. ij much space, and we will now instead bring under the notice of the reader some of the effects resulting from them, first, by the cruel overcrowding of the poor, and then obliging them even in the time of their distress to relieve each other, notwithstanding the excessive poverty of the poorer parishes a fact perfectly well known to the civic authorities, both through the voice of public opinion and the newspaper press. The demo- lition, however, of second and third class houses in the richer parishes continued without abatement, and in consequence the overcrowding of the poorer districts became even denser than before. The complaints of the parish officials, especially the medical officers, were so loud, that none but the Corporation of the City of London, including its principal officials, could have remained callous or deaf to the existing state of things. At length a circumstance occurred which fully proved to the Lord Mayor, aldermen, and others, the necessity of immediate and energetic action, and this motive power was no other than the visitation of the cholera. The attack over, they immediately commenced opera- tions. After having deliberated for a short time, they resolutely determined to destroy all the houses in the present Farringdon Road line, as that district was more overcrowded than any other in the City. And their resolution was not only carried out to the letter, but before they had finished their labours they had far exceeded their original determination. Every house in the line was demolished, and more than forty thousand of the working classes were driven from the locality, not c 1 8 THE CITY AS IT IS. a thought having been given by the destroyers as to where those ejected were to find shelter. Of those driven away a vast number settled in Clerkenwell, beyond the City boundaries ; others went over to the Surrey side into Lambeth and Southwark ; others of the more intelligent among them endeavoured to find lodgings in Holborn, St. Ann's, Blackfriars, and other localities where house-rent was likely to be within their means, even though the accommodation afforded might be small. The reader might imagine, from a vast number of the working classes still anxious to obtain dwellings in the City, as well as the shopkeepers dependent on them for their custom, and the immense space of ground laid bare by the demolitions a space, in fact, larger than would have held many second-class cities in England that building operations would soon commence. Those who imagined anything of the kind evidently knew very little of the Corporation of the City of London. Every man among them, aldermen, common council- men, and every other official, set his face against any proceedings of the kind, and the whole space of ground at last acquired the name of the Farringdon Street wastes. For some time the whole line of road re- mained barren and profitless, notwithstanding the fact that many builders from time to time made offers for it. Each in his turn had, however, his offer rejected, till at length the patience of the speculators became ex- hausted, and the Corporation was no longer troubled in the matter. Their poorer fellow-citizens who had INTRO D UCTION. i g dwelt in the houses had been driven away, and what more could be wanted ? But after a rest of some years the slumber of the metropolitan authorities was again broken, and their energies called once more into action, not in any man- ner to improve the condition of the many poor who still remained on the skirts of the line of projected road, but to adopt measures similar to those which had been so effectual on former occasions in other words, to drive them away altogether. But an excuse had to be found which might offer some justification for such a proceeding. To project a new line of road (the prin- cipal reason brought forward for the Farringdon Road demolition) would hardly do in the present instance, as no improvement was at the time required. Another reason was now given, and one which certainly carried with it a good excuse the degraded manner in which the inhabitants were crowded together, and the sanitary improvements absolutely required to guarantee the me- tropolis against an outbreak of fever or pestilence. JSTor, it must be admitted, were some stringent and strong reformations unnecessary. Bad as Farringdon Road had formerly been, it was far superior to what was to be found in the localities now proposed to be destroyed. It would be a difficult matter to give the reader any adequate description of the different courts and alleys marked out for demolition. The best notion which may be formed of them may be found in the reports of the City sanitary inspectors and parochial and medical officers. From the many quotations which might be 20 THE CITY AS IT IS. given, we will adduce one or two, commencing with an extract from one of Dr. Letheby's reports on the subject. " To say nothing of the too frequent occurrence of what may be considered necessitous overcrowding, where the husband and wife and young family of four or five children are crammed into one miserably small ill-conditioned room, there are numerous instances where adults of both sexes belonging to different families are lodging in the same room, regardless of all the common decencies of life, and where from three to five grown up men and women, with a train or two of three children, are accustomed to herd together like brute beasts or savages, where all the offices of nature are performed in the most public and offensive manner, and where every human instinct of propriety or decency is smothered. Like my predecessor, I have seen grown-up persons of both sexes sleeping in com- mon with their parents, brothers and sisters, cousins, and even the casual acquaintance of a day's tramp, occupying the same filthy bed of rags ; a woman suffer- ing from travail in the midst of males and females of different families that tenant the same room, where birth and death go hand in hand where the child newly born, the patient cut down from fever, and the corpse waiting for interment have no separation from each other or the rest of the inmates. Among many of the cases I have alluded to, there are some which have impressed themselves on my attention by their utter depravity cases where from three to four INTROD UCTION. 2 r adults of both sexes were found sleeping in the same bed." "We are not squeamish, but with a most sincere admiration for the learned doctor, we must, out of respect for our readers, decline going into further details of his report. Respecting the mortality among the infant popula- tion of the City (and in fact many of the poorer dis- tricts of the metropolis) twenty years since, let us quote as an authority Dr. Ross of Farringdon Street a gentleman who, in ability, integrity, and knowledge of the subject, was not to be surpassed by Dr. Letheby himself : " The numerous courts and alleys in this neighbour- hood perfectly swarm with children ; but so fearful is the mortality, from want of proper food and attention, that not more than one in five of those born ever reach five years of age. Their state is truly pitiable ; it is a shame and disgrace to a Christian country." Dr. Ross further stated that among the enormous number of the inhabitants of the City who had come under his notice, including the forty thousand already ejected from Farringdon Road, he had never found a third generation; or, in other words, an individual who had reached twenty years of age whose father and grandfather had been born in the locality. The ejections and demolitions decided on at last commenced, but the Corporation said not a word about replacing the houses destroyed with better-class dwell- ings. At length public indignation was aroused 22 THE CITY AS IT IS. through the medium of the press, and expressed itself so loudly and emphatically, that even the civic autho- rities could no longer be indifferent to it, and they promised to take the subject of erecting fresh dwell- ings for those ejected into their" serious consideration. Still nothing was done till the year 1861, when, on the 7th of March, Mr. Charles Pearson so forcibly brought the subject under the notice of the Common Council, that, after some time debating, tho following resolution was arrived at : " The noble street improvements undertaken by the Corporation having swept, and are about to sweep, away thousands of artizans and mechanics from their humble dwellings, to make way for the spacious streets and splendid warehouses to take their place ; to supply the lack of dwellings these wholesale clearances create, the Corporation have determined to vote a sufficient sum of money to purchase land and erect lodging- houses in the neighbourhood." Here certainly appeared, OD the part of the Corpo- ration, a step in the right direction. The City had promised, nay, voted, the money, and had even gone so far as to purchase the site, at a cost of some twenty- five thousand pounds. They then waited nine years ; public indignation in the meantime died gradually away, and the philanthropists were soothed; nay, more, the members of the Corporation were much complimented for their liberality. But having waited until it might be hoped the pledge would be forgotten, in place of building the lodging-houses promised, the INTRODUCTION. 23 City sold the land at a very enhanced price to the Metropolitan Railway Company for warehouses and works. It was estimated up to the year 1861, when the last demolitions were completed, that the number of artizans and their families who had been ejected from the Farringdon E,oad districts alone could not have been less than fifty thousand, and the only retri- bution or compensation the Corporation offered was the above-named promise, which was dishonourably broken. There is, however, one transaction of very late date, which ought in common justice to be placed to the credit of the Corporation. Some three years since, when public indignation had been again aroused at the ruthless manner the industrial classes. were year after year driven out of the City, while so much land lay waste and unproductive, the Corpora- tion, as an act of merciful consideration for their poorer fellow-citizens, graciously allotted on the extreme borders of the City, near Clerkenwell, a block of ground to a highly respectable working men's building society which had applied to them on the subject, on the condition, however, that they should pay for it a ground rent of 700 per annum ! For some time the building society endeavoured to prove that so high a ground rent would necessarily greatly increase the amount of rent the tenants would have to pay. The Corporation was, however, impracticable; and, as no better bargain could be made, the terms were accepted. CHAPTER II. DEMOLITION OF THE DWELLINGS OF THE WORKING CLASSES. A FTER the somewhat lengthened description we have given of the ejectments in Farringdon Road, and the manner in which the ground which had formerly been so densely covered with the dwellings of the working classes was allowed for the greater part of a quarter of a century to remain idle and unproductive, it might be thought that the cruelty and injustice of the Corporation on its poorer fellow- citizens could not have been carried further. This, however, was very far from being the case, for many other districts in the City of London, if not of equal magnitude, were scarcely less overcrowded, although the inhabitants were, as a rule, of a more respectable class. As before stated, the poor, when the demolitions of their dwellings were being carried on in Farringdon Road, in great numbers still continued to seek for shelter on the Surrey side of the water or in Clerkenwell, while others attempted to find homes in the already crowded districts of St. Ann's, Blackfriars, DEMOLITION OF DWELLINGS. 25 and the congeries of streets which lie between Watling Street and the Thames, so as to keep as close as pos- sible to the City firms by whom they were employed. The results were not only that the whole districts became fearfully overcrowded, but the poor-rates in the different little parishes (it being before the City parishes were formed into unions) became still higher. Appeals were now frequently made to the Corporation for some relief from this excessive taxation, and the Corporation at length listened to their complaints. Having deliberated for some time over the matter, they at length decided on applying to Parliament for a bill for the formation of New Cannon Street, ostensibly that it would be a grand civic improvement, but in reality that it would also have the effect of driving away all persons living in the line of road who would be likely to come upon the poor-rates. The plan suc- ceeded to admiration, the bill was obtained, and opera- tions were forthwith commenced. The houses in the line were demolished even with far greater rapidity than those in Farringdon Road, and the industrious classes who inhabited them were driven away; and, as usual, no one took the trouble to ask where they expected to find shelter, or, with one solitary excep- tion, interesting himself in the matter. The exception alluded to was the incumbent of one of the small over- crowded parishes on the line, all of whose congregation had been driven away. Feeling great commiseration for their lot, he made application on the subject to the civic authorities. He asked for permission to be allowed 26 THE CITY AS IT IS. to build a good model lodging-house on some of the vacant land in his parish, volunteering to find among his personal friends the money for the purpose, and further promising to superintend it himself, so that no disreputable persons might be mixed up with the tenants. His offer was courteously but peremptorily refused. "No," they said, "we have, at much trouble and expense, got rid of all that sort of gentry, and it would be bad policy to do anything to tempt them back again." It would be unjust to the authorities in power at the time to have imagined that they were actuated by any feeling akin to a personal dislike to the working classes ; it was a selfish pecuniary feeling which actuated them, nothing more. At present the same feeling of objection to the presence of the indus- trial classes in the City still exists, but it springs from a different sentiment. The motive is now comprised, as we intend hereafter to show, of a compound of pride and dishonesty ; the latter appearing in the desire to appropriate to the comfort, indulgence, and interests of the rich, endowments and institutions intended solely for the benefit of the poor, and their raising such barriers in defence of their ill-gotten powers as shall prevent, unless by a miracle or strongly developed angry public feeling terms in municipal reforms sometimes almost synonymous any reformation from being effected which may have the effect of turning some of the charitable funds and endowments to those for whose use they were intended. Before speaking further of the demolitions in the DEMOLITION OF DWELLINGS. 27 City, let us cast an eye on the condition of those ejected into the districts north and south of Farringdon Street Clerkenwell, Southwark, and Blackfriars into which a greater portion of the poor were driven. In Clerkenwell they were most fearfully overcrowded before those from Farringdon Road joined them. When the new-comers arrived none would build houses to receive them, the rates being already too heavy. Some idea may be given of the condition of the neighbourhood by quoting the Building News, July 12th, 1860. After mentioning several horrible examples of overcrowding, that journal says : " Within a limited area of courts and alleys of not more than half an acre, will be found fifty or sixty small houses let out in tenements. Without making^ any allowance for casual inhabitants for the night or otherwise, we shall here find congregated together, upon a fair average, a thousand men, women, and children." Dr. Griffiths, a medical officer of health, in a letter to the author, says, " The fact of a large family living in a small room with a decomposing corpse is a very common occurrence in my district." Let us now cross Blackfriars Bridge, and cast a glance at the condition of the working classes ejected from the City who settled in the Southwark district, in order to be as near the scene of their labours in the City as possible, whether at what is termed river work, as porters on wharves, loading and unloading barges, and similar occupations, all, in fact, directly or 28 THE CITY AS IT IS. indirectly employed by City houses. Time being a great portion of a working man's capital, he naturally, when expelled from the City, keeps as close to his work as possible, to lose as little of his energies in walking to and fro as is absolutel}' necessarj'. As the City demolitions progressed, the whole district gradu- ally became exceedingly overcrowded almost as much BO as Farringdon Road itself before the ejectment commenced. A short extract from a report at the time of Mr. Bianchi, medical officer of health for Blackfriars, and another from Mr. Rendell, medical officer of health for Southwark, will give an unvar- nished matter-of-fact idea of the poor in that locality about the year '61. Mr. Bianchi writes : " Again I inspected a house in Ewer Street in a fearful state of dilapidation, in which twenty-seven persons were living in seven small rooms. In many instances, many adult men and women were sleeping in the same room, without its being possible, even if there was any inclination, to make any provi- sion for decency or morality. I may also mention that in the lying-in ward of the workhouse four-fifths of those confined within this last twelve years have been young unmarried women, who have been obliged to live in the manner described." With regard to the state of the Southwark district, Mr. Rendell, the medical officer of health, wrote in the same year: "The kind of cases mentioned by Dr. Letheby in his report are very common in my parish. I have many in my mind such as the dead remaining, DEMOLITION OF DWELLINGS. 29 after death from infectious diseases, in rooms with the living. Overcrowding is just now the rule in our poorer habitations. I have constantly to get rid of men out of rooms where women are confined. One in search of abuses has only to choose the class of case he requires, and he can he supplied, usque ad nauseam et longius,'" 1 Other evidence might also be brought forward to show the degraded state of the whole district, which in the end had become a scandal to the metropolis. Nor did there appear to be much chance for any im- provement by the authorities in the district itself, as a very large proportion of the property belonged to the Church, and was known as the Winchester Park Estates. Of course, assistance from that quarter was not likely to be obtained, and things might have become, if pos- sible, worse, had not the Metropolitan Board of Works determined to take the matter in hand. After a little consideration, they resolved to make a road from Stam- ford Street, Blackfriars, to the Borough. They might easily have made it shorter and less expensive, but the line they at length determined on would be carried through the overcrowded districts, and the inhabitants would thereby be driven away. The houses in the line of the present Southwark Street having been destroyed, the ground, as in the case of Cannon Street and Farringdon Road, remained for many years utterly waste and useless, with the exception of a few patches on which some magnificent warehouses were built. How close was the affinity existing in the feeling of the Metropolitan Board of jo THE CITY AS IT IS. Works and the Corporation of the City of London, in their indifference to the welfare and comfort of the working classes those who had heen first, without pity, driven from the City, and then from Southwark may be seen by the following anecdote, which is a fact. A gentleman possessed of great experience in the habits and manners of the working classes, noticing the fearful overcrowding which had taken place in Newington and Lambeth after the demolition of the houses in the formation of Southwark Street, suggested to one of the leading members of the Metropolitan Board of Works whether it might not be practicable to build a number of first-class model lodging-houses in Southwark Street, so* that, perhaps, a thousand skilled artizans and their families, and other respectable em- ployes, might be able to live nearer to their work in the City. "Why do you not form a company and build them ? " was the reply ; " the Board are always willing to listen to an offer. But if your time is of any value, let me give you a hint. The Board will demand from you, in all probability, a far higher ground-rent than from any one else." " Why so ? I should have thought it ought to have been cheaper, considering the uses to which the ground would be applied." " Certainly not," answered the member of the Metro- politan Board of Works. " The close vicinity of houses for the working classes would deteriorate the value of DEMOLITION OF DWELLINGS. 31 the adjoining land for other purposes, so your idea is very unlikely to come to anything after all."* But other circumstances occurred which tended to drive the operatives who tenaciously clung to the neighbour- hood of Southwark Street to a still farther distance from the City but for which neither the Corporation nor the Metropolitan Board of Works were to blame such as the extension of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway across the river to Ludgate Hill, which passed through almost the whole of the dwellings of the working classes then resident in the vicinity, while the extension of the Charing Cross Railway to the Borough completed the work ; and now the whole of the South- wark Street district near the Thames is as completely cleared of the dwellings of the working classes as Earringdon Road itself. But the demolition of the houses of the small shop- keepers, poorly paid clerks, warehousemen, shop as- sistants, operatives, and others resident in Farringdon Road and its numerous courts and alleys, by no means comprised all those who had been ejected from the centre of the City Union. Another enormous work of destruction was projected and carried out the long and magnificent line of road known as Queen Yictoria Street, extending from Blackfriars Bridge to * Here, however, it ought to be stated, to the honour of the Metro- politan Board of Works, that after allowing an obscure portion of the ground to remain profitless and waste for some twenty years, stimu- lated at last by public opinion, they allowed the Peabody dwellings trustees to erect on it a block of their admirable model lodging- houses, but requiring a heavy ground-rent in return. 3 z THE CITY AS IT IS. the Mansion House. Other grand improvements were also effected in the neighbourhood of the Bank and the Royal Exchange down to the river-side, nor did they stop till every dwelling-house of the value of from 150 to 200 a year was completely destroyed. "What, then, must have been the injustice practised on the industrial classes prior to the latter demolitions being effected, and how completely they must have been swept out of the centre of the City, when even houses of that rent were condemned to be destroyed, while those erected on the spot were either warehouses, offices, or the terminus of the Cannon Street Railway, which in itself ejected more than twelve hundred persons. It should not be imagined, however, that the central City parishes alone were guilty of these unmerciful works of destruction. Many extensive alterations took place in the eastern, north-eastern, and south-western districts of the City, most of them being the work, directly or indirectly, of the Corporation or public companies under their patronage, all, however, tend- ing, either to a greater or less degree, to drive the working classes, small tradesmen, and skilled crafts- men outside the City boundaries, and all in this respect succeeding, whatever might be the ostensible object of the undertaking. Let us first glance at the parishes known as the East London Union, reaching from Corn- hill to Aldgate. In this district formerly lived a very large working population, employed in the different warehouses of the East India Company and private mer- DEMOLITION OF DWELLINGS. 33 chants, as well as several manufactories and large mercantile establishments. The part of this union the most densely crowded with the working classes was, perhaps, that stretching from the parish of St. Olave's, Hart Street, inclusive, to Whitechapel. The first movement for dislodging the poor from the locality was the formation of the Blackwall terminus. This drove several thousands from the union, who sought a refuge in the neighbourhood of Whitechapel and Shoreditch, already overburdened with their own poor. Afterwards other improvements took place, each in its turn carried out in those parts where the working classes were the more thickly congregated together, and this system was continued till it was difficult, if not impossible, to find the dwelling of a man whose income was less than 150 a year resident in the union. But while these City unions were thus employed in getting rid of the whole of their working classes out of their district, what was the condition of White- chapel ? Not simply that they were overcrowded with their own poor, but they were thus obliged to receive the whole of the poor from the East London Union. Perhaps a better example could not be given of the extreme selfishness exhibited by the City and their heartless treatment of the poor, than by contrasting the condition of the workhouses of St. Olave's, Hart Street, district, comprising Fenchurch Street and the different localities adjoining it that is to say, the districts from which the poor were ejected with the D 34 THE CITY AS IT IS. "Whitechapel workhouse. Our description of the work- house of the latter parish, somewhat condensed, was written by the pen of Mr. Charles Dickens, in Household Words, February, 1856, and, it may be added, not in the slightest degree exaggerated. " Crouched under the" wall of the workhouse, in the dark street, on the muddy pavement stones, with the rain raining on them, were five bundles of rags ; they were motionless, and had no appearance of human form. ' What is this ? ' said my companion ; ' what is this ? ' ' Some miserable people shut out of the casual ward.' As we were looking at them, a decent working man, having the appearance of a stonemason, touched me on the shoulder. ' This is an awful sight, sir/ said he, 'for a Christian country.' 'It is, indeed, my friend,' sa} r s I ; ' it is, God knows.' ' I have seen much worse than this,' said the stonemason ; ' I have counted fifteen, twenty, and five-and-twenty at a time. . . .' " Mr. Dickens, then addressing the master of the workhouse, said, " ' Do you know that there are five wretched creatures outside ? ' 'I have not seen them, but I dare say there are.' ' Do you doubt they are there ? ; ' No, not at all ; there may be many more.' ' Are they men or women ? ' * Women, I suppose. Very likely one or two of them may have been there last night, and the night before that.' ' There all night, do you mean ? ' ' Very likely.' My friend and I looked at each other, and the master of the workhouse added quickly, 'Why, Lord bless me ! what am I to do ? what can I do ? The place is DEMOLITION OF DWELLINGS. 35 full the place is full every night. I suppose I must give the preference to women with children, mustn't I ? You would not have me not do that.' ' Surely not/ says I ; ( it is a humane principle, and I am glad to hear of it. Do not forget I do not blame you. What I want to ask/ I went on, ' is whether you know anything against these five beings outside,' 'I don't know anything about them,' says he emphatically ; ' that is to say, they are there solely because the place is full solely because the place is full.' " We went to the ragged bundle nearest the door, and I touched it. No movement replying, I gently shook it. The rags began to be slowly stirred within, and little by little the head of a young woman of three or four and twenty, as I should judge, gaunt with want of food and dirt, but not naturally ugly, appeared. * Tell us/ I said, 'why are you lying there?' * Because I can't get into the workhouse.' * Were you here last night ? ' ( Yes, and the night before that too.' " * Let our readers ponder well over this terrible recital of Mr. Dickens, and then learn that a few hundred paces off, in the neighbouring City parish of St. Olave's, Hart Street, stood the workhouse not only for its own poor, but for those of the parishes about Fenchurch Street, which was no longer used, and the poor had been sent away. At the time, and for fifteen * The publication of the above article in Household Words had the 177 1 2 Churchwardens' audit dinner . . 27 Gifts to poor . . . > 32 13 Contribution in aid of poor-rate . 100 Total . . 336 14 2 " By a will dated the 16th of January, 1503, the following bequest was made to the parish of St. Edmund the King and Martyr : " Twenty shillings in bread among poor parish- ioners of the parish, and 20s. in coal ; 5s. among the priests and clerks for certain yearly services in the church (superstitious uses) ; os. in alms for the poor ; each of the wardens, 65. ScL ; 7 to each of two chaplains nominated by the trustees. Residue for the repair and rebuilding of the property of the City. " In 1868, the annual income had increased to 1,421 2s. 4d., and the expenditure was as follows : *. d. Rector, for Sunday evening service . . 195 6 6 Clerk, pew-opener, verger, lighting and warming church . . . 204 To 23 poor parishioners, in money . . 497 To 23 same poor persons, in clothing, bread, coals, and meat . * . 1-50 Meat for poor --t" : i. . * 32 Repairs . . , . * 97 Total . 1,175 66" CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 57 or, on an average, 23 for each poor person. The one who receives most has upwards of 60. Sir Charles then calls the attention of the public to other abuses in the distribution of the City charities, equally disgraceful with those we have quoted, and then concludes his admirable letter in the following manner : ""Without entering further into any humiliating details, the City is pregnant with such cases, the diffi- culty being to make any selections. It may be stated generally that the funds left for the relief of the poor are, for the most part, expended by the wealthy owners of City property in paying their church and poor rates, the latter being the contribution with which their shops and counting-houses are charged to the union rate. The love of power is also lavishly indulged in by maintaining a body of well-paid officials, who do duty as congregations to the otherwise deserted churches. . * , At St. Michael's, Cornhill, there has been an unstinted expenditure of charitable funds in indulging the aesthetic tastes of the church- wardens. The intense costliness of this work of art for it can be regarded in no other light gives a painful impression of luxurious waste, quite irrespective of the source from which the expenditure has been defrayed. The ' dim religious light ' has been so fully obtained by highly elaborate stained glass windows, that the church has to be lighted with gas even in a bright summer's forenoon. But any mode of getting rid of these charitable funds is better than the pervading 58 THE CITY AS IT IS, demoralisation of the sinecure rector, the full-blown church officials, and the show paupers at 60 a year each. In many of the parishes there are large accu- mulations which, even in the present liberal license, the churchwardens have failed to dispose of." The Times not only inserted Sir Charles Trevelyan's letter, but in an admirably written leading article complimented him highly upon it, almost to the full agreeing with him in the views he had taken, and in some instances even exceeding in blame the lan- guage in which he denounced the abuses existing in the civic charitable endowments. " The parochial charities of the City," the writer said, " stand alone among kindred endowments in two material respects. While their wealth has been increased beyond all pre- cedent or previous calculation by the progressive value of sites in the centre of London, their local objects have been extinguished or diminished by the same pro- cess. The area of the City within the municipal limit is less than one square mile. This was once the entire metropolis. It swarmed with a busy, thriving popu- lation, who were born and died within its limits, and were animated by a warm feeling of attachment to municipality, guild, and parish, the fruits of which are to be seen in the numerous churches and overflowing charities. There is scarcely the semblance of the cor- porate or parochial feeling in modern days, when, as Sir Charles Trevelyan says, 'the City has been con- verted into an exchange or counting-house for the metropolis.' At the same time, it must not be sup- CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 59 posed that such, necessities as the founders of these charities designed, however injudiciously, to relieve no longer exist in London. They still exist in those parts to which the poor of the City have retired like aboriginal tribes before the advance of civilisation. They are to be traced in the weekly returns of the metropolitan pauperism, in the constant appeals for metropolitan hospitals, and in the dark calendar of metropolitan vice and ignorance. Yet there are small parishes containing but three or four acres, and nearly covered by public buildings, which have charitable incomes of thousands a year." After commenting upon the different points in Sir Charles Trevelyan's letter, the article concludes : "It is a common impression that an effective jurisdiction over all charities is vested in the Charity Commis- sioners ; but this impression is quite unfounded. The Charity Commissioners have no power to restrain charity trustees from squandering their funds, unless where actual breaches of trust have been committed. They may submit to Parliament schemes for the reform of charities, but no principles or rules have been laid down under which the schemes are to be framed or passed into law, and the result is that little can be done except by application to Chancery. It is high time for this branch of our law to be revised and reconstructed ; and, in any event, there is ample room for the movement originated by Mr. Rogers and sup- ported by Sir Charles Trevelyan. There is a living want of education for a special class side by side 60 THE CITY AS IT IS. with a reservoir of charitable funds, now running to waste." This letter of Sir Charles Trevelyan and the reply, and the article on it in the Times newspaper, may almost be considered as the proximate cause of the movement which has taken root. If it has not as yet put forth many solid branches, it is hoped that in time it will effect some reformation in the administration of our City charities. It also had the effect of bringing forth, through the medium of the public press, several other parochial abuses which were hitherto but little known to the general public. Among them was one which appeared in the Times newspaper on the 25th of June of the same year, in a letter signed " Civis." In it he says : " Sir Charles Trevelyan has by no means exhausted the catalogue of parishes in which large sums of money are wasted, or worse than wasted, in so-called charity ; but one of the instances mentioned in his letter is so remarkable, that I cannot do better than give some details respecting it which he has omitted. " This instance is to be found in the parish of St. Mildred's, Bread Street. St. Mildred's is a small parish, lying on both sides of Cannon Street, about half way between St. Paul's and Cannon Street Station. The revenue of its charity estates is now 824 10s. per annum. What were the trusts upon which this pro- perty, or at least the bulk of it, was given cannot now be discovered, since the older deeds seem to have perished in the Great Fire. Ever since then the CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 61 charity income has been applied to what is described in the more recent deeds as ' the common benefit and profit of the parish/ To these words the trustees have given a liberal interpretation, for out of the 824 they not only defray all the expenses connected with the church, but actually pay the whole poor-rates 'of the parish, reaching to nearly 300 a year, and thereby relieve the occupiers to that amount annually. The items of their expenditure are shown in the accounts they furnish the Charity Commissioners. Among them there appears the following : Vestry clerk . . . Parish clerk . Organist . . . Pew- opener . . . Clothing for choristers (two years) Donations to curate (two years) Gifts to the poor (two years) Applied in aid of poor-rate (two years) ! Donation to Bread Street ward schools Breakfast and dinner on Ascension Day audit dinner, and refreshment after vestries, visiting parish estates, and cab hire (two years) , s. d. 77 4 6 1 38 1 6 30 33 19 10 35 18 6 60 . 81 6 rs)! 518 3 10 ols 21 >n Day 241 1 1,136 15 2 " Now of this charity revenue of 800 a year, nearly 300 goes to pay the rate at which the parish is assessed to the union for the support of the poor that is to say, it is applied to relieve, not the poor (there are no poor in the parish), but the wealthy occupiers of offices and warehouses who would otherwise have to pay their rates out of their own pockets. Of the remaining 500 2 THE CITY AS IT IS. a year, how much is there that can be thought to be usefully or even charitably spent ? St. Mildred's is a small parish, covering only two or three acres of ground. It has only two inhabited houses, all the rest of the area being taken up by warehouses and com- mercial offices, the persons employed in which live far away in the suburbs. There are no poor, so that the ' gifts made to the poor ' go to the people not resident in the parish, but who have been at some time in their lives connected with it, and who may, perhaps, be at this moment receiving parish relief elsewhere. There is nobody to go to the church, and, even if there were, the neighbourhood contains so many other empty churches, that the accommodation provided here would still be wholly uuneeded. As a matter of fact, the con- gregation consists of the salaried organist, parish clerk, and pew-opener, and of the choristers who get their clothes for nothing. In short, all the money spent on church purposes is, like the 600 which was expended a few years ago in repairing the church, absolutely thrown away. Not one citizen of London, not one member of the Church of England (except indeed the officials above mentioned), gets any good whatever from the maintenance of St. Mildred's Church, while we hear on every side complaints of the want of money for the extension of education, for the erection of churches in neglected districts, for the support of hos- pitals and infirmaries. Many other cases at the time came under the notice of the public respecting these City parochial charities, each in its way as objectionable CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES. 63 as those we have quoted. One parish had an estate producing 300 a year, invested in the rector and churchwardens, to sustain and support all the works, ornaments, and other burdens of the parish church. Of this there remained a balance in hand of 580, after paying the parish and vestry clerks, pew-opener, fire- engine keeper, and wine, which item alone was eight guineas, &c. Among the charges was dinner at Rich- mond ; the items in the three different years were re- spectively 29 8s. 2d., 42 5s. Oct., 32 11s. 6d. The explanation was that the churchwarden 'has always considered it very advantageous for the interests of the parish, and the promotion of good feeling among the parishioners, that an opportunity should occasionally be afforded them to meet together in a sociable and friendly manner.' This parish has been merged in another, which has a separate church fund of 482 a year, from which 20 105. 6d. appears to have been paid in 1868 for an audit dinner at the Crystal Palace. In another case the estate consists of nine houses and twenty acres of land, yielding an annual rent of 333. The trustees are eighteen in number. The whole body went once in three years to inspect the property, after which they dined together, till the affair was brought tinder the notice of the public, and charging 50 to the charity for their expenses. They thought it ' very desirable that the whole of the trustees should be . intimately acquainted with the nature of the property ! ' The nouses were let on a lease, expiring in 1876, and some of the leases of the land will not expire till 1926." 64. THE CITY AS IT IS. Another characteristic specimen of the management of the civic parochial charities is mentioned by Sir Charles Trevelyan, which it is worth while to quote if only for the absurdities, to speak in the most compli- mentary manner, to be detected in its administrations. "There is a charity for poor widows, freemen, &c., with an income of 60 a year, the whole of which is derived from dividends. In 1868 the charge for management was : . d. To the seven trustees for dinner, &c. . .800 Secretary and solicitor . , .1146 Total , . 19 4 6 The same trustees made the following charge in the same year for the management of a loan charity : *. d. To the seven trustees : Expenses of attend- ing eight meetings, at which six loans of 400 each were granted, and two paid off . . . . 53 Secretary and solicitor . . . 139 12 9 Messenger . . . * 35 Total . . 227 12 9 TOTAL" COST OF MANAGEMENT. *. d. 1864 , . 209 16 1865 . . 220 6 1866 . , 200 7 9 t. d. 1867 . , 216 7 1 1868 . . 227 12 9 OF LOANS GRANTED. 1864. 1865. 1866. 1867. 1868. 45576 CITY PAROCHIAL CHARITIES, 65 AVEKAGE COST OF EACH LOAN. x. d. 1864 . . 52 9 1865 . 73 8 8 1867 . . 30 1 8 1868 . 37 18 9 1866 . . 40 1 6 Five years' average cost of each loan, 46 15s. lid. " When another charity was founded in 1461 it seemed doubtful whether it would yield 40s. a year beyond some small charges for superstitious uses. It is now invested in a farm, yielding 275 a year, which is applied to doles and church purposes. In 1863 the trustees charged 15 15s. for their expenses in visiting this farm, which had been let in the previous year for twenty-one years, and yet in 1865 they charged 13 2s. 11^. for supervision/' It would occupy too much of our limited space to quote further instances of extravagance and other abuses in these City parish charities, of which the poor who have been driven from the City are deprived of all the benefits which were solel} r intended for their use and comfort, and we shall content ourselves with a mere list of their different descriptions and the value of their endowments, begging the reader to bear in mind that they are taken from a Parliamentary return pub- lished April 17, 1871, and that they are now more valuable than they were then. s. d. Education. .... 16,851 11 6 Apprenticing .... 2,000 10 10 Clerical purposes \ .-. . . 5,827 13 10 Carried forward . . 24,679 16 2 F 66 THE CITY AS IT IS. Brought forward Church purposes .... Dissenting places of worship and their ministers .... Public uses .. . . . Almshouse and pensioners Distribution of articles in kind . . Distribution of money . . . General uses of the poor . . . Medical And yet this enormous amount for parish charity alone is fully absorbed in a district of the metropolis con- taining only 70,000 souls, among whom there are few or no poor. f. ree annual prizes of 25 each for (1st) the best design, (2nd) the best model, and (3rd) the best execu- tion and workmanship, of some article in gold or silver which, when manufactured, shall be less than thirty ounces in weight. An annual prize of 25 each for the best specimens of (1st) chasing or repousse work, and (2nd) engraving. Originality shall be necessary to obtain either of the prizes for design, and no copy shall be the subject of a prize. The company have also resolved that a travelling scholarship of 100 per 1 66 THE CITY AS IT IS. annum may be awarded by the wardens to a student who has shown exceptional talent, and who shall have obtained a prize for design for three successive years, in order to enable him to study art in the precious metals on the Continent of Europe. (Signed) WALTER PRIDEAUX, Clerk of the Goldsmiths' Company. Gold- smiths' Hall, 1876." While admitting that the Goldsmiths have here made a grand move in the right direction, at the same time the date of the above resolution, 1876, opens the ques- tion, that if the master and wardens have the right to award prizes of the kind, why has it not been done before ? Want of funds could not be pleaded in excuse ; and if their present action in the matter be praiseworthy, as it indisputably is, what term ought to be applied to the inaction in furthering the technical and artistic education they have hitherto maintained ? Nor is this all that has lately been performed in the right way by the Goldsmiths' Company, although it would be difficult to determine how their craft is in any way benefited by the following gift. Since the publication of the above praiseworthy resolution on the part of the company, they have awarded the sum of 1,000 for the promotion of chemical research. It is difficult to perceive in what way a donation of the kind is likely to benefit their craft, as, perhaps, no branch of chemistry is better understood than that relating to the precious metals, nor can we understand from what clause in their charter they derived their right to make the gift. But, after all, their present DUTIES OF LIVERY COMPANIES. 167 much-vaunted liberality is trifling indeed when com- pared with their expenditure. We have already shown what is the annual value and average expenditure in maintaining their hall, and we have heard on good authority, too, that the salary of their clerk is not less than 4,000 a year, more, in fact, than the salaries of the vestry clerks of St. George' s, Hanover Square, Pad- dington, and Kensington put together. But we may be told that the clerk of the Goldsmiths' Company is a solicitor, and that a very large amount of law costs may be considered as included in his salary. Be it so ; but it would be found on investigation that the salary he receives is not only fully equal to the combined salaries of the three vestry clerks and the vestries' solicitors' bills put together, but that there will be a considerable balance remaining. Two other livery companies also deserve especial notice, as incorporated in great part for performance of duties which at present are thrown upon the vestries and ratepayers under the Adulteration of Food Act the Brewers and the Vintners. As we have already slightly alluded to the former of these guilds, we will confine our few remarks to the Vintners. Speaking of this company, Stow tells us, " The Vintnors of London were of old times called Marchant Vintnors of Gascony, and so I read them in the records of Edward 2 the 11 yeare, and Edward 3 the 9 yeare. They were as well Englishmen as straungers born beyond the seas, but then subjects to the King of England, great Bour- deaux marchaunts of Gascoyne and French wines ; 168 THE CITY AS IT IS. divers of whom were maires of this citie, namely John Adrian vintnor, Reignwold at Conduit, John Oxen- ford ; Henry Picard, that feasted the kings of England France and Scotland, and Cypris; John Stoder that gave Stoder's lane to the Yintnors, which four last named were Maiors in the time of Edward 4th, and yet Gascoigne wine then sold at London at not more than 4d. per quart and Rhenish not above 6^. the gallon. I reade of sweet wines, that in the reign of Edward 4 John Peeche, fishmonger, was accused for that he pro- cured license for the only sale of them in London, which notwithstanding he justified by law, he was imprisoned and fined. More I read that in the 6th of Henry 6 the Lombardes corrupting their sweet wines, when knowledge thereof came to John Ranwell Maior of London he in divers places in the Citie, commanded the heades of the buts and other vessels in the open streets, to be broken to the number of fifty, so that the liquor running forth passed through the citie like a stream of raine water, in the sight of all people from which arose a most loathsome savour." From the above it would appear that the Vintners' Company, though rarely quoted in the present day, were formerly of great importance and standing in the City, and they were, moreover, entrusted with little less than arbitrary power to carry out the duties assigned them. Further, their original charter was confirmed by the inspeximus 6 Henry VI., in which the duties of the guild were more strictly defined. It invests the company " with the right of trade search DUTIES OF LIVERY COMPANIES. 169 over inferior buyers and sellers," ordaining for this purpose that the company, or " merchants of the craft or merchandize of wines," as it terms them, "shall choose each year four persons of the most sufficient, true, and most cunning of the said craft (that hold no tavern), and them present to the Mayor of London, or other presiding officer, and swear them in such pre- sence, to oversee that all manner of wines whatsoever they be, are sold at retail in taverns at reasonable prices, &c. That the Taverners be ruled by the said four persons, who are empowered to correct and amend defaults, which may be found in the exercise of the said craft, and punish therefore according to their good advice and consideration, with the help of such Mayor or president." As a further proof of the power placed in the hands of the Vintners' Company, it was ordained that " all wines coming to London shall be discharged and put to land above London Bridge against the Vintry, so that the King's bottlers and gaugers may there take custom." The Vintners were also empowered to punish with great severity all persons adulterating mines. Those which particularly came under their notice appear to have been the following, as enumerated by Herbert in his history of the City companies : Muscadell, a rich wine ; Malmsey ; Rhenish ; Dale wine, a sort of Rhenish ; Stum, strong new wine ; Gascony wine ; Alicant, a Spanish wine, and made of mul- berries (!) ; Canary wine, or sweet sack (the grape of which was brought from the Canaries) ; Sherry, the original sack, not sweet ; Rumney, a sort of Spanish 170 THE CITY AS IT IS. wine. Sack was a term loosely applied at first to all white wines. The reader may possibly agree with us that at the present time there exists for the Vintners abundant opportunities for performing with advantage the duties for which they were incorporated, and for which, let it be understood, they have abundant funds in their pos- session, not only for the City of London, but for the whole metropolis. They have, moreover, large funds in their hands for charitable purposes, especially for the poor of their trades. Herbert tells us that " before the fire the site of the Vintners' Hall was occupied by thirteen almshouses, devised to the master, wardens, and commonalty of the craft of Vintners by the will of Guy Shuldham, Nov. 7th, 1446. . . . And he directed that the said company should grant these thirteen little mansions lying together, parcel of his lands and tenements intended for such almshouses, to thirteen poor and needy men or women of the said craft to bo appointed by the master, wardens, &c., of the said craft, for which no rent was to be taken from them. When it was determined to widen Thames Street, these aims- houses were pulled down, and twelve others, under the name of the Vintners' Almshouses, with a central chapel, were built instead in the Mile End Road, and are now confined to women. Other endowments have been added to them, which enabled the almshouses to be rebuilt on a larger scale. The other gifts, including 10 for an annual dinner, coals to the inmates, and various other allowances, amount to 435 2s. in thq DUTIES OF LIVERY COMPANIES. 171 whole. The almswomen consist of the widows of free- men of the company, liverymen's nidoms being pre- ferred." It would be satisfactory to know how many of the widows domiciled in these comfortable "little mansions " are widows of members of the trade, as well as how many persons participating in its various charities were connected either directly or indirectly with it. It would tire the patience of the reader to go at any greater length into the question of the duties imposed upon the different livery guilds, not only with respect to the control and inspection of their trade, but their municipal duties as well, and from the performance of which no guild, however important or influential, was exempt. And these duties were frequently not only onerous, but disagreeable as well. For example, in the year 1515, when the City guilds were in the height of their prosperity, an entry made in the City records states that it was ordered and decreed by the Court of Aldermen " That the clerks and beadles of the following eight mysteries, that is to say, the Mer- cers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths,. Skinners, Merchant Taylors, and Haberdashers, should from thenceforth be discharged of the office of constable, raker, or scavenger for ever, as long as- they should stand and continue in their said rooms of clerks and beadles." But this order, in common with all other ordinances theretofore made concerning like discharges, was on the Monday after Epiphany, in the eighth of Henry VIII., " utterly repealed, revoked,. 1 72 THE CITY AS IT IS. and annulled."* Nor has this decision on the part of his Majesty Henry VIII., as far as we have been able to learn, been repealed up to the present day, proving how imperative were the obligations placed on the City guilds for the performance of municipal duties, and at the livery's expense, similar to those carried out by the metropolitan vestries in the present day. The question may now naturally arise in the mind of the reader If the duties of the City guilds are so useful and various, why should they not be extended over the metropolis at large, and thus relieve the over- burdened ratepayer of a large portion of the heavy taxation at present imposed upon him? The reply would most probably be, that by their charters their trade, as well as charitable and municipal duties, were confined to the City of London and its precincts, and by the emigration (as they are pleased to call the wholesale destruction of the dwellings of the working and industrial classes within the City boundaries by the Corporation, Metropolitan Board of Works, and other agencies) their duties have fallen into abeyance, and can no longer be practised, even if their charters still remain unrepealed. As this is a very common excuse in the mouths of the members of the different City trade guilds, the following facts and extracts from their charters still unrepealed may go far to prove to the reader the fallacy of such arguments, f For ex- * " City Records," Rep. 3, folio 121. t To Mr. Firth's exhaustive work, " Municipal London," we arc indebted for the greater part of the above quotations. DUTIES OF LIVERY COMPANIES. 173 ample, the Goldsmiths' Company have by their charter the right of inspection, search, and regula- tion of all sorts of gold and silver, wrought or to be wrought, and exposed for sale within the City of London and suburbs thereof, and within three miles of the same, and in all fairs, marts, and markets, cities, towns, or boroughs, and all other places throughout England. The Skinners' Company had, by a charter of Edward III., a similar power to punish the defective manufac- ture of furs. Their rights of search, &c., were scarcely less extensive than those of the Goldsmiths. The Dyers' Company have full control over the trade in London, and within ten miles ; and by one of the last of their charters every person practising the mys- tery must be a member of the company. On making inquiry some three years since, we were informed that only one member of the guild was really a dyer. The Bakers' Company have power to prove and weigh all bread sold in the City and a considerable area round it, and if defective to seize it, and give it to the poor. They had also powers to impose fines, and levy the same by distress. In like manner the master and wardens of the Brewers' Company have the power to control all those that exercise that mystery in London and for four miles in extent; while the Butchers' Company had control over the City and two miles round it. The Cutlers'. Company had the control of the trade in the City and the suburbs within three miles of th& i 7 4 THE CITY AS IT IS. City. The Wax Chandlers had the same power over their trade in the City and within ten miles round it. The Saddlers' Company had the right to make search and destroy defective wares in London and suburbs, the Borough of South wark, the City of Westminster, and all places within two miles .of the City and suburbs. The Carpenters' Company have a limit of two miles from the City ; the Cordwainers, three miles ; the Cur- riers, three miles ; the Founders, three miles ; the Bakers, twelve miles ; the Coopers, two miles ; the Weavers, ten miles ; the Scriveners, three miles ; the Fruiterers, three miles ; the Farriers, seven miles ; the Homers, twenty- four miles ; the Apothecaries, seven miles (now regulated by statute) ; the Combmakers, ten miles ; the Feltmakers, four miles ; the Needlemakers, ten miles ; the Coachmakers, twenty miles ; the Grun- makers, four miles; and so on with the other com- panies. It may be seen from the above how fallacious is the excuse that the power of trade control and the exercise of municipal duties imposed on them by their charters are confined to the City boundaries. If an average were made of the space around the City that each guild has the right of search, regulation, and control, it would be found to be little, if any, less than that comprised under the Metropolis Local Management Act ; and such being the case, whether it ought not to be the policy of our City municipal reformers to agitate for some extension of their fund over the same for, as it is commonly expressed DUTIES OF LIVERY COMPANIES. 175 in the City charters, the benefit of the people. Of the power and means of the guilds in relieving, and in per- fect keeping with their charters, the heavy present local taxation the metropolitan population are labour- ing under, we purpose speaking in the following chapter. CHAPTER VIII. LIVERY COMPANIES THEIR REVENUE. TTAVING now given the reader a short sketch of the duties imposed upon the City livery companies, we will leave it to the reader to determine how those duties are performed, so as to merit the praises of the Lord Mayor, the Master of the Mercers' Company, and other speakers, at the dinner given to the masters of the City guilds, alluded to in the last chapter, and proceed to inquire whether the funds in the hands of the companies are not sufficient to enable them to extend their operations for the " benefit of the people at large." To ascertain the amount of wealth in the possession of the City guilds would be a very difficult task, but we will endeavour to give the reader some approximate idea. In the first place it is stated, and on apparently good authority, that nearly one-half of the land in the City is held in trust by them for municipal, charitable, educational, and trade purposes. What is the value of the whole would be a difficult task for any private individual to arrive at, for so great is their LIVERY COMPANIES THEIR REVENUE. 177 assumed power or license that they possess, at any rate the more influential companies among them, thai! they have set the Government at defiance. For example, Mr. Firth tells us that " in the year 1833 the Royal Commissioners were permitted by some of the companies to inspect some of their charters, but, notwithstanding their power to examine upon oath, their authority was often denied, their circular of queries unanswered, and some of the companies declined to appear or give any account of their stewardship." Surely no Royal Commission was ever treated so scurvily, or bore its snubbing with equal composure. The independence and opposition of the companies was especially notice- able in the case of those that had large funds, and whose control of them was assumed to be irresponsible, while small companies, who had very little to lose, were frequently willing to tell the Commissioners everything they wished to know. The Grocers, for example, declined to give any account of themselves to the Com- missioners, and probably they were wise in their gene- ration. It is not, however, without a certain aptitude that one recognises the motto of the company " God grants Grace." It would be interesting to know how the graceless Grocers do dispense their vast property. For example, in 1636 one William Pennefather by his will gave 233 6s. Sd. to buy land of the yearly value of 11 13s. 4d., such sum to be divided among seven poor almspeople. How much does the land bring in, and how much is paid over? So a house is given to the same company to provide 4 a year N 178 THE CITY AS IT IS. for an iron post and a glass lanthorn to be fixed at Billings Gate. If the house now brings in (as it possibly does) 300 a-year, how much is given to the poor ? Many other instances might be quoted of the imper- tinent independence and want of courtesy to the Go- vernment authorities equally striking, but they exercise others, perhaps, still more objectionable, in concealing their affairs from the inferior members the governors of many of the richer companies maintaining that they owe no account even to their own members, much less to the public. The Corporation itself attempted to take the same high standing, but with hardly the same success. In a somewhat arrogant " statement " of the Court of Aldermen, submitted to both Houses of Parliament after the introduction of the Bill of 1856, the Aldermen say, " that they exposed their title-deeds and the accounts of their revenue to the Royal Commissioners with feelings of honest pride and generous confidence, but that they little expected to see from the pen of British statesmen a report applying laws of meum and tuum to a Corporation different to those which, at least at present, prevail in regard to private indi- viduals." As a proof of the difficulty of obtaining any accurate knowledge of the funds and estates of the livery com- panies, we will quote that of the Drapers as an example. The income of the Drapers' Company was represented to the Commissioners in 1837 as about 24,000 a year, and as a rule it is generally quoted by the members of LIVERY COMPANIES THEIR REVENUE. 179 the guild at about the same amount now. But was it the real state of the case ? Since 1837 the average value of property in the City and the Drapers' Com- pany are, perhaps, the largest owners of land in it has more than doubled, without counting the great advance in value of their other properties. They have since rebuilt the hall, which is assessed for the poor at 8,000 a year net, at a cost of 70,000, and they have let off their garden on building leases for 15,000 per annum more that property being alone worth the amount their whole assets were valued at in 1837. And now arises the interesting question, what is done with the surplus ? They spent on entertainments and dinners 5,000 a year, on salaries 4,000 a year, and on pen- sions and gratuities some 5,000 a year more. Has their expenditure increased in all respects in propor- tion with the increase of funds ? If so, the new and costly hall in Throgmorton Street must be little other than a huge house of gluttony. "It would," says Mr, Firth, " be edifying to have a public audit of their accounts. Five hundred years ago all the members of a company knew what their funds were, and how they were spent. This very company obtained its ano- malous privileges in 1365, on the ground that meddlers in drapery, by their ignorance of the trade, greatly enhanced the price, and the quality was deteriorated. To-day a London draper would have small chance of getting much information from the company, if indeed he could get admitted at all." Of the Merchant Taylors we have already spoken, :8o THE CITY AS IT IS. but what we have said conveys only a slight idea of the enormous funds in their possession, and which, by the way, are rapidly increasing. Let us give one case in point. Possibly the reader, when passing from the Old Jewry through Coleman Street, may have noticed a house on the left-hand side, from which a large clock protrudes, which is visible from one end of the street to the other. This house is the property of the Mer- chant Taylors' Company; it reaches from Coleman Street through to Basinghall Street, and in the centre was a hall some thirty-five feet in diameter known as the Wool Exchange. The whole block was let on lease for 750 per annum, but, the lease falling in, it was renewed at a ground rent of 3,500 per annum, on the condition that the company who took the lease should pull down the old buildings and erect new. This has been done at an expenditure of nearly a quarter of a million of money. But a curious fact remains to be noticed, and which may be found in all modern build- ings erected on land belonging to the livery com- panies no person, other than "a care-taker," is allowed to sleep on the premises, for the purpose, as it is stated, of escaping the inhabited house duty, but more probably with the intent of impeding the industrial classes from returning into the City. And yet the buildings alluded to, now let out in offices, might have afforded house accommodation for more than seven hundred persons. The same rule has been carried out in all those magnificent buildings in Cannon Street, as well as most others (we certainly LIVERY COMPANIES THEIR REVENUE. 181 have been able to find no exception) within the City boundaries. The same difficulty exists in obtaining anything like a just idea of the revenue of the Goldsmiths' Company. Quoting a letter from the Weekly Dispatch, addressed to the editor, and signed " Nemesis," evi- dently the composition of a gentleman well acquainted with his subject, and to which, if we could take any objection to his statements, it would be that he has rather underrated his conclusions than exaggerated them, he says : " In the history of the Goldsmiths' Company allu- sion will continually be found to the artificers and commonalty, as to apprentices, freemen, and wardens. For example, as be^pre stated, in 1529 a dispute arose between the artificers and poor men of the craft of goldsmiths relative to the election of wardens. How much of the funds of this corporation now reaches the artificers of the guild ? They, the craftsmen, have benefit societies, long since formed to replace the one of which they have been dispossessed. What does the Goldsmiths' Company contribute ? The hall of the Gold- smiths' Company is worth, say, if our authority is correct, that the medical school was the property of the professors (although not a word on the subject is to be found in any of the hospital char- ters), and that they had a right to buildings propor- tionate to the expenditure incurred in the erection of the hospital. Now the sum quoted (30,000) does not include the cost of the site, which has been shown to be about twenty-five per cent, of the cost of the whole school building. This will raise, even at the most moderate calculation, the gross cost of the schools to 35,000 or .40,000. It has been proved that if the school build- ings had been erected for the accommodation of the same number as are at present attached to the hospital CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 263 at the same proportionate cost of the medical schools of St. George's, Westminster, and Charing Cross Hos- pitals, the new building at St. Thomas's might have been erected at a cost of some 5,000 or 6,000. This would have left a balance from the gross sums expended to have built economically a workhouse in- firmary of some 150 to 200 beds- But the advocates of the enormous expenditure pro- posed to be lavished on St. Thomas's Hospital argued that the immense advantages which would accrue from it, as a perfect model of sanitary science and skill, would be more than commensurate for its cost, especi- ally as the works would be superintended by the most eminent medical professors. Judging, however, from the results, some of the most cheaply erected hos- pitals in the metropolis would upon sanitary grounds compare very favourably with it. Take, for example, the hospitals of the Scotch Fusilier Guards or Gre- nadier Guards, which did not cost more than 80 per bed, including the value of the ground, instead of 833. But possibly a still more striking comparison may be drawn by contrasting the cost and effects of St. Thomas's with that of the, unfortunately, little known Poplar Hospital. The loud boasting as to the excellent sanitary advantages derived from the eminent scientific gentlemen who were consulted on the erection of St. Thomas's Hospital gradually ceased a year or so after it opened, and a most suspicious silence supplied its place. Of the cause on our own authority we are unable to speak with any certainty; but from the 264 THE CITY AS IT IS. hospital report * it would appear that in 1875 those two strong proofs of defective sanitary condition in a hospital, erysipelas and pysemia, were developed in the wards to an alarming degree, there having been no fewer than fifty-one cases of the former, of which thirteen proved fatal; of the latter sixteen, all fatal. Singular to say, no public notice has been taken of this terrible calamity, and the Local Government Board, which ought to have interested themselves in the matter, seemed to have passed it over with perfect indifference. Twenty-nine cases had certainly proved fatal, without taking into consideration the remainder, many of whom through life might carry with them the seeds of the disease. But then they were in a celebrated hospital, erected as a model to all others, and " surrounded by all the requirements of science," and what could they have more ? One thing more might be added, and which is perfectly true that not the slightest blame, either directly or indirectly, could be thrown on the medical staff for this unfortunate state of affairs ; on the con- trary, every kindness and attention were lavished on the unfortunate patients ; their deaths were to be attri- buted solely to defective sanitary arrangements, and no other cause. The reader may possibly remember the case of an epidemic breaking out in a large charity school at Wandsworth some two years since, when three girls out of a total of 300 died from fever. Public attention was called to the subject, and a rigorous search was very properly made to discover the cause * Quoted from the Medical Times and Gazette. CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 265 of the outbreak, and energetic measures were taken to prevent a repetition the Government authorities themselves taking, as they ought to have done, an active part in the matter. But we put it to the reader whether in a hospital containing 400 patients, no fewer than twenty-nine died from defective sanitary con- ditions, it ought not to have interested the Government and the public press more than it did, as well as whether the hospital itself ought not to have been closed till the cause of so terrible a misfortune had been dis- covered, and, if possible, rectified ? Let us now turn to Poplar Hospital, one of the poorest, and certainly one of the most useful, hospitals in London, and managed with an amount of skill and devotion to the interests of the patients second to none, even the richest, in the metropolis. Perhaps we may be accused of presumption in deciding or even speak- ing on the subject of "skill," as being a point far above our capacity to decide upon ; and in proof it may be urged that the professors of St. Thomas's, St. Bartholomew's, and other great hospitals are men of eminence, whereas the working medical staff of the Poplar Hospital are men not known beyond the locality they inhabit, more than one among them having been known to keep open dispensaries. Perhaps, we repeat, we may be accused of presumption in passing an opinion on so abstruse a subject ; but as there may be one miti- gating circumstance in our case, we may as well offer it to the reader before we go any further. We admit that our opinions on the matter are based upon an old- 266 THE Cin AS IT IS. fashioned theory held by certain scientific stars in the medical profession in but little estimation, that is, "judging of the tree by its fruits," and that, too, on subjects connected with the medical profession as well as other things. Should it chance that the reader may be of our opinion, he possibly, after having read the following few facts and figures, will admit that in our comparison between the Poplar Hospital and St. Thomas's (that civic sick asylum) we are not altogether wrong in the conclusion we have arrived at. For many years the only hospital in the eastern por- tion of the metropolis was the London. This, as the reader is doubtless aware, is an institution in high repute, and with a medical staff inferior to no hospital in England. But from, the position of this hospital great inconvenience was felt and danger incurred in carrying patients who had met with serious accidents when working in the East and West India Docks, which was still further aggravated when the Victoria Docks were opened, as well as the many large factories and ship-building establishments in the neighbourhood. To remedy this unfortunate state of things, several ship- builders and owners, as well as gentlemen connected with the docks, with Messrs. Green, Wigram, and Ravenhill at their head, resolved, if possible, to start a hospital somewhere in the neighbourhood of Poplar. The scheme was opposed on the plea that medical men and surgeons of eminence could not be found who would superintend and care for the patients at so great a distance from their private practice, and therefore CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 267 the whole scheme would turn out a failure. But the gentlemen who started the idea were men of a practical turn of mind, and did not admit the objection. Their reasons were simple in the extreme, and the result has not only proved that they were correct, but has strengthened us in our conclusion that the whole medical science of the metropolis is not solely confined to those who attend the rich and aristocratic, but that there is as much skill to be found among our general practitioners and parish surgeons as among the phy- sicians and surgeons of the highest estimation. To the objections raised against opening a hospital in the dis- trict, that the medical men residing near the locality were merely general practitioners, and therefore inca- pable of attending to the serious accidents which would be brought under their notice, Messrs. Green and friends argued that many of them possibly the majority had formerly served as surgeons in the merchant service,, and that if they were capable of attending scientifically to serious accidents which occurred at sea, they would be equally competent to treat the same class of cases on land. They were, moreover, supported in their decision by Government, which made over to them the old Blackwall custom-house for a hospital a building, according to modern views, utterly unadapted for the purpose. Subscriptions were now raised, some beds and apparatus purchased, some general practitioners in the neighbourhood who had served at sea were- appointed as surgeons, and the hospital was opened. And what has been the result ? This hospital, small 2b8 THE CITY AS II IS. as it is, containing only, if as much, a tenth part of the number of patients in St. Thomas's Hospital, in an edifice so inexpensive that, even at the present high price of materials and labour, it would probably have cost not more than 45 per bed instead of 833 as in St. Thomas's. No sanitary authority of eminence was called in to advise upon what improvements and alterations should be made consistent with the advance of modern science, the managers contenting themselves with great cleanliness and good ventilation, yet it receives a greater number of serious accidents than any three in- cluding St. Thomas's and St. Bartholomew's of the West-end hospitals put together, and the success attending their operations and cures is fully as satis- factory as in any other hospital in the metropolis, no matter how eminent its medical staff may be. From the Poplar Hospital Report of 1872 (the latest we have seen, though we are informed those published since exhibit a still more flattering state of affairs), there were received 262 in-patients, and treated 2,512 out-patients all surgical cases. Of operations and amputations of different descriptions, including those of the thumb and finger, they had no fewer than fifty- two, seven cases of ligature of the principal arteries, more than a thousand wounds and lacerations, nearly eight hundred con- tusions, twelve fractures of the skull, six of which were compound, fifty-one other fractures, nine of which were of the humerus, twenty-four of the fore arm, twelve of the thigh bone, two of them compound. And yet, notwithstanding this large number of surgical CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 269 cases, comprising more wounded than occurs in many battle-fields, during the whole year there were only fourteen deaths, less than one-half the number that occurred in St. Thomas's Hospital from defective sanitary arrangements alone. Of the deaths which occurred in the Poplar Hospital, five died from the serious nature of their wounds a few hours after ad- mission, and eight before the close of the following day. Nor is this result the only gratifying feature we have to mention respecting the administration of the Poplar Hospital. Objectionable as it may appear in the eyes of the designers, advisers, and architects, and especially the eminent sanitary authorities of St. Thomas's Hos- pital, not one death was occasioned during the whole year by pyaemia or erysipelas a fact possibly unequalled (surpassed it could not have been) by any hospital in the metropolis. Before quitting the subject of the Poplar Hospital we may add, to the disgrace of the Lord Mayor and Corporation, that although the patients admitted are principally those who contribute in a great degree to the wealth of the City seamen in the merchant ser- vice it is the worst supported in the metropolis. It may be urged that, as a body, the civic authorities are not called upon, in their corporate capacity, to take under their consideration an institution so far removed from the City itself. But they should also bear in mind that the two great hospitals of St. Thomas's and St. Bartholomew's are still to a great extent under the authority of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, that they 270 THE CITY AS IT IS. are enormously rich, that their uses were not intended for the poor of the City alone, but " the suburbs thereof," and, as we shall show in the next chapter, the waste of funds in their administration would go far beyond the maintenance of the Poplar surgical hospital even if it were three times its present size, and its sister surgical hospital, the Dreadnought, as well. They are surely bound in common humanity, if not common honesty, to exert themselves in the matter. As it is, the subscriptions given by the merchants and capitalists of the City and that the richest and most commercial city in the world form a singular contrast between the charitable feelings of our wealthier classes for mis- fortunes of the kind and that of the poorer. On look- ing over the subscription list some two years since, we found that the working men in the principal ship- building yards in the neighbourhood subscribed a larger sum for the maintenance of the hospital than all Lom- bard Street and the Royal Exchange put together. It must not for a moment be imagined that, notwith- standing the advantage which might be gained from far greater economy in hospital building than that shown in St. Thomas's Hospital, we would advise a forced economy from want of means similar to that to be foun$ in the structure of the Poplar Hospital. Without hesitation we admit it to be unfit for the uses of a general hospital such a one, in fact, as would be sufficiently large for the immense population gathered around it. Moreover, the accommodation for the resi- dent medical officers is far worse than ought to be pro- CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES, 271 vided for gentlemen of so much skill and humanity, if not of popular eminence, attached to it. At the same time, if instead of 833 per bed, as at St. Thomas's Hos- pital, one for 70 per bed were erected such, in fact, as the infirmary lately built in Kensington and made to accommodate 400 patients the number at present to be found in St. Thomas's it would hardly be sufficient for the wants of the immense industrial population employed near it. CHAPTER XI. CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES (continued). TF there may remain any doubt in the mind of the reader whether, by the ruling of Lord Eldon in 1809, St. Thomas's Hospital was not under the abso- lute control of the civic authorities, according to its original charter, that can hardly be the case with the other City hospital, or " House of the Poor " as it was called, even till the commencement of the present cen- tury, St. Bartholomew's. A proof of the intention of its institution may be found in its original charter of 36 Henry VIII. The letters patent,* after stating that although the monastery of St. Bartholomew had been dissolved, yet for the future the] charitable uses for which it was founded should be continued, the King " desiring nothing more than that the true works of charity and piety should not be abolished there, but rather fully restored and renewed according to the primitive pattern of their general sincerity, and the abuses of the foundation of the same hospital on lapse of time lamentably occurring, being reformed, have * Translation of letters patent, June 23rd, 1544. CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 273 endeavoured, as far as human infirmity will permit, that henceforth there be comfort for the prisoner, shelter to the poor, visitation of the sick, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, clothes to the naked, and sepulture to the dead, administered there, and that other works of piety be performed there to the glory of Almighty God, and to the common utility and hap- piness of our subjects." By this it will doubtless appear to the reader that the original establishment of St. Bartholomew's Hos- pital was simply and purely that of a parish work- house under the Local Government Board in the pre- sent day. If further proof were needed to establish the parochial or pauper character of St. Bartholo- mew's for the reception of the metropolitan poor, it may be found in the deed of covenant between King Henry VIII. and the Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens of London (under whose management the institution was placed) respecting the hospitals, dated 27th of December, 1546, in which it is related that "our Sovereign Lord the King is pleased and contented that the said hospital of Saint Bartholomew's shall from henceforth be a place and house for the relief and sustentation of poor people, and shall be called the 'House of the Poore,' in "West Smithfield, in the suburbs of the City of London, of King Henry the Eighth's foundation." But while the hospital was at first used as the City workhouse, one of its principal uses was that of a hospital in the present acceptation and meaning of the T 274 THE CITYAS IT IS. word, for we find it stipulated in the same letter patent that " the said Lord Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens, and their successors, shall find perpetually one person sufficiently learned in the science of physic, and one other person having sufficient knowledge in surgery, to be continually attendant on the sick and sore poor people at the said hospital, hereafter to be called ' the House of the Poore,' and to minister to them from time to time such things as shall be needful and necessary for their sicknesses and diseases; and that the said Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of London, and their successors, shall give and pay to the same physician yearly the sum of 20, and to the same surgeon yearly the sum of 20, and that the said Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens of London, and their successors, at their proper costs and charges, from time to time shall buy and provide all manner of poticary ware and other things most necessary and convenient for the making of salves, and all other things touching physic and surgery, for the help and healing of the said poor sick people." It would occupy too much space to go at any length into the history of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. By degrees it began to lose more and more of its attributes as a parish workhouse in the strict meaning of the term, and in equal ratio its uses as the pauper sick asylum of the metropolis. It still remained under the absolute control and government of the civic autho- rities, but although occasionally different rules have been made for [its management, in no case whatever CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 275 has it been removed from their jurisdiction. Nay, more, they were empowered by an Act, 5 Philip and Mary, which on several occasions was put in force, for granting the profits of sundry offices, &c., for the use of the hospitals, especially duties on "the balance commonly called the King's Beame, the gawginge of wyne and fyshe, and the measurynge or measures of silk and woollen clothes, &c., commonly called Black- well Hall." Nor are we aware of any Act of Parliament repealing that power of taxing the citizens of London for the maintenance of St. Bartholomew's Hospital should the state of its funds require it. St. Bar- tholomew's was, in fact, the first hospital supported, beyond its endowment, by a tax levied on the citizens ; and one curious circumstance connected with raising money by means of taxation for the support of this charity was, that the livery companies were called upon to supply a large portion of the amount required. For example, in the year 1548 an act was passed by the Common Council for assessing the City companies in the sum of 500 marks, to be paid annually to St. Bartholomew's Hospital. It is perfectly true that after continuing their payments, together with the City, for a century and a half, they attempted to avoid the responsibility, and for more than fifty years the contri- bution of 500 marks annually remained unpaid. At length the governors of the hospital took proceedings in Chancery, not only for the continuance of the tax, but for the arrears as well, which they gained ; and the Court of Common Council, 12th of November, 1712, THE CITY AS IT IS. ordered the payment of 3,214 4s. 9d. and the costs of suit, " decreed by the Court of Chancery to be paid to the said hospital by the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, and of the yearly sum of 100 to the said hospital for ever." Whether the livery companies continued their quota it would be difficult to say. If they did, it would be one of the few instances on record during the last century and a half in which they have not succeeded in relieving them- selves from every duty consistent with their citizenship. If the objectionable features we noticed in our description of St. Thomas's Hospital during the first thirty years of the present century were not to be found in St. Bartholomew's, at the same time they did exist in a smaller degree. True, no jobbery equal to that practised by Astley Cooper, and which required all the energy of the Lancet to modify, though not entirely to suppress, can be quoted ; still the appoint- ments to the hospital staff were made far less as a rule with respect to the skill and learning of the applicant than the influence certain medical men had with the governing body. One surgeon of eminence, apart from the students in the school, was in the habit of taking private pupils, who paid him sums varying from 500 to 1,000 ; not that the scientific education he was capable of imparting was in any manner superior to that of other professors, but that his influence with the governing body was so great, that in the event of a vacancy in the medical staff the candidate he nomi- nated was certain of the appointment, and that to the CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 277 Injury of others who had been educated at the school, whose scientific acquirements were greatly superior, and who, perhaps, had anxiously waited for many years in the hopes that when a vacancy occurred they might obtain the much-coveted prize which so frequently led to fame and fortune. And here, again, the Corporation, who really still possessed great power in the government of the hospital had they pleased to claim it, seemed perfectly apathetic on the subject, leaving the whole affair in the hands of one of their colleagues, a man of indisputable integrity and humanity, it is true, but of no particular intelligence or education, who was easily led by the dominant medical officer of the day, and. whose nominal patronage for many years was so great, that any per- son he favoured was almost to a certainty appointed to a vacancy. This system, however, after a time, thanks to the medical press, received a check, and the abuse was much ameliorated. The first break in the old system of patronage took place about the time of the election of Sir James Paget, whose principal qualifica- tion for the appointment was his vast professional skill, and who has since done so much to maintain the repu- tation of the hospital, notwithstanding the unfavour- able auguries pronounced by the supporters of the old system of selecting their medical and surgical officers. That St. Bartholomew's Hospital has hitherto been of incalculable service to the poor of the metropolis there can be no doubt, and it indisputably is so in the present day ; but the question is, Whether its bene- fits might not have been considerably extended, if a 278 THE CITY AS IT IS. just system of economy had been introduced into its management? Again, another question should be entertained, Whether to maintain a hospital of such magnitude in its present position is not a useless waste of power to do good ? When bringing St. Thomas's Hospital under the notice of the reader, we especially dwelt on the injustice it inflicted on the poor in remov- ing it so far from the reach of the dwellings as well as the localities in which the great massesof our work- ing classes lived or were employed. With St. Bar- tholomew's Hospital the direct reverse has been the case ; the poor, instead, have been driven far away from the principal metropolitan hospital, and the one above all others intended for their benefit. In the beginning of the present century, and in fact till some thirty years since, St. Bartholomew's Hospital stood in the centre of a densely crowded district, and was the great means of medical aid and assistance to the tens of thousands congregated around it. And then com- menced, as we narrated in our introductory chapter, the great civic improvements. The first of these de- stroyed the dwellings of some 35,000 of the working classes, who in a great measure depended upon the hospital for medical and surgical relief. Then followed other demolitions of the dwellings of the working classes even nearer to the hospital, and these have continued till the present day, when it is next to an impossibility to find the dwelling of an artizan or labourer any- where near the building. In the year 1874 we took a list of the addresses of the patients both in and out CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 279 patients who attended during one week, and we found the average distance they lived from the hospital was something more than a mile and a half. In respect to the out-patients alone, let the reader imagine how fearful a tax it must be on the energies of a sick and wounded person to walk a distance of three miles, to and fro inclusive, without counting the time he is obliged to remain in the hospital till his turn comes to see the physician or surgeon of the day. And yet a vast space of ground within the City boundaries remains unbuilt on, and it might be supposed some of it could be used for the erection of dwellings for the working classes. Of that, however, there is little chance ; the clause in all leases or agreements against any persons beyond " care takers " being allowed to sleep on the premises will effectually stop the increase of the industrial classes among the City population. There are now of their order 120,000 fewer than in the year 1780, nor is there the slightest chance of the return of a tithe of that number. Of course any attempt or suggestion to remove even a portion of St. Bartholomew's Hospital to a locality where the working classes abound, would be met with indignant opposition both from the medical staff itself and the City authorities. Any one proposing a scheme of the kind would be both abused and ridiculed, and the old objection would be brought forward that it would be an injustice to men of such high eminence as the medical staff at present attached to the hospital to expect them to attend at another established at a greater 280 THE CITY AS IT IS. distance from the West-end, and thereby the greater portion of their private patients, than they do now. But the same argument that we used in the case of St. Thomas's will hold good with its sister, the " House of the Poor," or City general hospital, St. Bartholomew's. We drew a comparison between the success of the prac- tice of the celebrated professors of St. Thomas's Hos- pital all men of high fame both for medical and sanitary science and that of the comparatively un- known staff of the Poplar Hospital, certainly not to the discredit of the latter ; and we will now offer a similar proof that an immense amount of skill may be displayed by other medical men of comparative little note by a short comparison between the results of the practice in the Dreadnought, or Seamen's Hospital, now removed to Greenwich. On the medical side the results under Dr. Harry Leach and Dr. Balfe, as well as the surgeons, Mr. Johnston Smith and Dr. O'Farril, together with the other members of the staff, were quite as favourable, and the cases equally difficult of cure, as those of St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In the Dread- nought Report we find the following paragraph : " The death-rate of this hospital, as compared with that of the metropolitan general hospitals, has for many years past been very low. In 1875 the total death-rate was 5 '5 per cent., the medical death-rate being about 8 per cent., and the surgical death-rate a little below 3 per cent.* The average death-rate in the London * Compare this with the mortality in' St. Thomas's Hospital from pyaemia and erysipelas attendant on surgical cases alono.j CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 281 general hospitals may be estimated at about 9 per cent." From another paragraph in the report we gather that the rules for the admission of in-patients extend to certain common though most formidable cases inad- missible in the larger and more celebrated general hos- pitals. " Admission," it says, " is always afforded to cases of phthisis, of incurable diseases, and of infectious diseases (small-pox alone excepted), and to moribund persons. The explanation of the fact of so low a death-rate in a hospital with 250 beds, in which all kinds of cases are treated, may in this instance be sup- plied readily, and with confidence that it will insure for the charity liberal support." "With every possible respect for Mr. "W. Johnston Smith, sen., resident medical officer of the hospital, we must beg leave to differ from him in the prognostication (and on that point alone) with which he concludes his report. So far from agreeing with him in the " liberal support " he speaks of, it would be impossible to imagine any- thing more mean, beggarly, or contemptible than the contributions bestowed on this invaluable charity by the civic authorities, merchants, and capitalists of the City of London. To return to St. Bartholomew's Hospital and its sanitary condition. Although a building of much older date than St. Thomas's, it would appear, judging from the comparative number of cases of erysipelas and pyaemia in the surgical wards, to be in a far more satisfactory sanitary condition. With 33 per cent, more in-patients than St. Thomas's, instead of the sixty- 282 THE CITY AS IT IS. eight cases in the latter hospital, St. Bartholomew s had but forty-six. Some singular anomalies in con- struction of hospitals and the benefits arising from sani- tary science occasionally appear, which almost induce us to believe that many of its laws at present in vogue are based upon somewhat empirical principles. St. Thomas's Hospital, on whose construction a vast sum of money as well as scientific study was bestowed, has a proportionate amount of these terrible maladies far in excess of St. Bartholomew's, erected at a far smaller cost. St. Bartholomew's, in its turn, was far more expensively and scientifically constructed than the Dreadnought, and has proportionately more cases ; while the latter hospital has had far more expended on it than the Poplar, which, as stated in the last chapter, had during the year not a single case of death arising from either maladj'.* * "Were it not for the serious nature of the subject, the disap- pointing manner in which many of the efforts of our sanitary professors terminate would occasionally almost reach the ludicrous. One general rule seems to apply to the hospitals erected under their advice or control : that the larger the sum expended the more unsatis- factory the results. This is particularly observable in our lying-in hospitals, establishments where perfect ventilation and appliances are, perhaps, more necessary than iu any others. From some researches made by the late Dr. Edward Smith, it would appear that the greater the amount of money expended in the erection of one of these institu- tions, the greater the mortality, while that known as Queen Charlotte's Hospital, in the Marylebone Road, which did not average more than 40 per bed, was the most successful of all. The average cost of these institutions was of course far higher than the lying-in wards in the London workhouse infirmaries, but the mortality in the lying-in hospitals was six to one higher than in the workhouses. But the most extraordinary fact. connected with the subject took place in the King's College Hospital. By way of showing the manner in which CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 283 Another point has frequently been urged against any interference with the convenience of the medical staff of these two great City medical charities, St. a lying-in institution ought to be managed, so as to avoid the excessive mortality which took place in them, as well as to offer a good model to all institutions of the kind, it was determined to open two wards in that Imilding in which every requirement of science, both obstetrical and sanitary, might be found in perfection. Greater ingenuity and study than was shown in the arrangement of these wards it would be difficult to imagine. The floor was of oak, as being considered less liable to absorb organic matter than deal boards, and the walls had a coating of cement which, though costly, was con- sidered far superior, in a sanitary point of view, to the ordinary lime-white of the generality of institutions of the kind. Each patient was allowed between four and five thousand cubic feet of air to her bed, and the arrangements for warmth and ventilation were of the most liberal and complicated description. The expense incurred, as may naturally be supposed, was enormous. It was estimated that taking into account the original cost of the building, it must have averaged some 600 per bed. Unfortunately the results were by no means commensurate with the ingenuity and liberality of the arrange- ments. After the wards had been open for four years, the mortality among the patients was shown to be so great, that considerable doubts arose in the minds of many of the governors whether it would not be better to close them. The promoters, however, would not allow this to be done, but they proposed other and far more scientific arrange- ments which would make the wards and their sanitary condition perfect. The alterations having been made, the wards, which had been temporarily closed, were again opened, but the results were even more lamentable than before. During the next two years the mor- tality among the patients, so far from diminishing, rose to one in fifteen of the gross number of patients received, and the wards were then definitely ordered to be closed. The mortality during the six years they were opened averaged about one in twenty-three. In eleven of the metropolitan workhouse infirmaries, comprising Ber- mondsey, Chelsea, Clerkenwell, Fulham, St. James's, and six others, out of 2,413 deliveries there was not otie death. It may also be stated that the whole of the latter cases were superintended by parish sur- geons, those in King's College and the lying-in hospitals by physicians- in high repute. 284 THE CITY AS IT IS. Thomas's and St. Bartholomew's Hospitals, by extend- ing the benefits to be derived from them farther east- wards into those districts in which the labouring poor of the City principally reside. It is urged that the duties performed by the medical and surgical professors are purely of a philanthropic description ; that in accept- ing their appointments they are actuated solely by the wish to benefit their fellow-creatures, and to do this they gratuitously devote some hours per week, and those in the most valuable part of the day, in solacing the misfortunes of the poor, and instructing, by their example and teaching, a vast number of young men to follow in their footsteps, so that in their turn they may be equally useful to those requiring medical aid. To add to these self-imposed philanthropic labours would be an act both of cruelty and injustice an unwar- rantable encroachment on the time of professors who already give, without hope of earthly reward, so much of their skill and energies to those too poor to pay for them. But if the subject be further investigated, some very different features perfectly justifiable in their way may present themselves in those purely philan- thropic principles which actuate the professors of these two great City hospitals, showing that with kindness of heart worldly interests may occasionally be mixed up, without the slightest disrespect to the physician or injury to the patient. That philanthropy may be one of the existing causes which induces a young physician or surgeon to obtain one of the medical appointments to either of these City hospitals we will CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 285 not for a moment attempt to deny ; but to say it is the sole cause is to state an absurdity. They are, in fact, most valuable appointments, and the first step to wealth and eminence. True, they receive no annual salary for their services, but they are, as a rule, well remunerated in another manner. To each of these City hospitals is attached a medical school, which in its way is of great and remunerative use to the medical staff and pro- fessors. It appears from the Lancet and Medical Times that when the session opened in 1876 there were no fewer than 551 students attached to the schools of these two hospitals. Each of these gentlemen, when they shall have received their diplomas and start in practice- on their own account, if they have occasion to call in any one in consultation, naturally choose for the purpose one of their old professors, and thereby raise him to a greater eminence (or popularity) than he would other- wise have obtained. But there is another benefit of considerable importance which the professors of these two City hospitals derive from the medical schools their immediate pecuniary value. The most moderate fees demanded of the pupils at any medical school in London is 30 per annum, and at schools of such eminence as that at St. Thomas's and St. Bartholo- mew's they would in all probability be more. If, then, at these two schools there is an average, as shown above, of 551 pupils, the annual amount of fees received from them must amount to 16,530. Now it can hardly be maintained, with an income of that amount, that the professors of these City hospitals are actuated solely 286 THE CITY AS IT IS. by philanthropic motives, as their advocates maintain them to be ; and their convenience and time are not more worthy of consideration than those of the labour- ing poor dependent on the City of London for their means of existence, and for whose benefit these two hospitals were originally instituted. Possibly the reader may imagine that out of the above-named sum of 1*6,530 there may be many out- goings which would diminish the amount. There may be, but not that we can see to any great degree. If, again, there are any, in all probability they are consider- ably lessened by the support given them by the hospital authorities, either in pecuniary aid, or the cession of valuable land belonging to the hospital, or both. We have already stated that St. Thomas's Hospital school building and land cost some 35,000 ; but as this ex- penditure had been sanctioned by the Lord Chancellor, though upon what principle it is difficult to understand, nothing more can be said on the subject. But with St. Bartholomew's it is different. If the reader will merely visit and inspect the medical school buildings on the hospital ground, and then take into consideration that it has been estimated that every square foot of that ground is worth some 5, he may form some rough idea of the value of the whole. Apart from this, St. Bartholomew's medical school has from time to time received from the hospital authorities presents in hard cash. The latest sum we are able to prove from the Report of the Charity Commissioners was given some twenty-five years since (no later account having been CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 287 forwarded to them), and amounted to 5,000 for the erection and improvement of some school buildings. It must not be sxipposed that we do not admit, and to the full, the necessity and advantages of our medical schools ; but we much doubt, when it can so easily be proved by their returns that they may be made self- supporting, whether it is justifiable to add to their profits by applying to their use funds and valuable land which were bequeathed or given for the sole benefit of the patients. Nay, more (without in this case alluding to St. Thomas's or St. Bartholomew's), applications are frequently made to the public solely for the maintenance of the sick poor in the hospitals, a part of which, and occasionally a great part too, is applied to the further- ance of the interests of a private profitable undertaking the medical school ; and in support of our statement we offer the following case in point. The reader is aware that a livery company the Grocers' lately erected a new wing to the London Hospital at a cost of 25,000, and which, in commemoration of their " charity," is to be hereafter called the " Grocers' Wing." How far any " charity " was shown by the Grocers' guild in the matter it would be somewhat difficult to determine. Had the members of that company subscribed from their own private resources the sum necessary for the erec- tion of the new wing, it would have been impossible to have complimented them too highly for their philan- thropy ; but to bestow money placed in their hands for other uses than the one to which they in this case applied it, hardly entitles them to the credit of an act 288 THE CITY AS IT IS. of personal charity. At the same time it must be ad- mitted that the poor, in this instance, benefit by the uses they placed the money to in the erection of the hospital wing ; and being one of the few applications of money, in any sum, for the benefit of the working classes by the City guilds, we will admit a certain amount of credit is due to them in the matter. The wing, as the reader is aware, was opened with great state and ceremony by her Majesty ; and on the score that the current expenditure of the hospital was considerably in excess of its revenue, an urgent appeal was made to the public to supply the deficiency, which was responded to with more or less liberality. But about the same time the appeal was made, the following extract from the minutes of the meeting of the house com- mittee of the London Hospital appeared in the Lancet on May 13th, 1876 : "With reference to the subject of medical school management, and in order to carry into effect the decisions arrived at therein at the meet- ings of the house committee and the past officers, which have from time to time been specially held to consider this matter, it was moved by Commander Davis, R.N., seconded by H. J. Thompson, jun., Esq., and unani- mously resolved : " ' That with a view to the development and improve- ment of the London Hospital medical school, and in con- nection with the proposed joint management thereof in future by representatives of the house committee and of the medical council respectively, it be recommended to the governors that, during the next three years, tho CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 289 present grants to the college, amounting to 290 per annum, be replaced by a grant of 2,000 per annum, the committee trusting that by this liberal assistance on the part of the governors, the medical school of the London Hospital may be placed on a more satisfactory basis, to the great ultimate advantage of the charity. 5 " At five per cent., 2,000 a year would repre- sent the interest on 40,000, a sum not only far in excess of that received on the occasion of the special appeal to the public alluded to, but the whole of the amount given at the sermons on Hospital Sunday and Hospital Saturday fund put together. True, it is said the 2,000 a year is only to continue for three years, but if it ceases at that time it will be very unlike the trans- actions in money matters between the governing bodies of hospitals generally and medical schools. Nor in this place had the medical school of the London Hos- pital the plea of poverty to offer in extenuation, for without inquiring into the value of the ground given by the governors to the school and other assistance afforded it, we find that it has at present no fewer than 131 pupils, who, at the moderate sum of 30 per head for tuition, will raise the revenue of the school from that source alone to 3,690 per annum. Let us now turn to another hospital, that of St. Mary's, Bethlehem, for the insane. This, in common with St. Thomas's and St. Bartholomew's, is termed a royal hospital, and was instituted for " distracted persons," and placed under the management and control of the Mayor, Common Council, and Citizens of London. V 2 9 o THE CITY AS IT IS. Nothing can be more explicit on this point than the words of its original charter of King Charles L, dated the 14th of October, 1638. "Know ye that we, from our soul affecting and intimately desiring to support and establish the said work (Bethlem Hospital), for us, our heirs, and successors, do grant and confirm to the said Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the said City, and their successors, the said custody and ordering and government of the said house and hospital called Bethlem, and all manors, lands, tenements, possessions, and revenues whatsoever, and wheresoever lying and being, belonging and appertaining to the same house and hospital called Bethlem, and do make, ordain, and constitute by these presents, those the Mayor and Com- monalty and Citizens of the said City, and their suc- cessors, masters, keepers, and governors of the said house and hospital called Bethlem, and of the said manors, lands, tenements, and other premises belonging to the same house called Bethlem And further, for us, our heirs, and successors we will, and by these presents declare our good pleasure, and do charge the came Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the said City, and their successors, that they do not deliver nor grant the said manors, lands, tenements, possessions, or revenues belonging to the said house or hospital, or any part of them, for any term or terms of years exceeding the number of one and twenty years, to commence from the time of the making of such like grant or lease, in possession, and not in reversion." The powers men- tioned above were further confirmed by the " Act of CITY MEDICAL CHARIIIES. 291 Parliament confirming Agreements with the Governors of Hospitals," 22 George III., 1782, in which the Lord Mayor and Common Council were still invested with the government and control of Bethlem Hospital, which, from its first foundation as a religious house by Simon Fitzmary, sheriff of London, 1247, had stood near the church of St. Botolph, without Bishopsgate. Fitzmary established it as a priory of canons, with brethren and sisters ; and Edward III., in the fourteenth year of his reign, granted a protection for the brethren, Militia Beatce, Mariee de Bethlem, within the City of London. About the year 1809 it was decided to remove this hospital, which had remained in its old locality, from its original foundation into St. George's Fields, South wark, and a large plot of ground containing several acres, now of great value, was secured and appropriated for the purpose. A very large sum of money, at least for that day, was expended on the building, which, however, in common with other instances which might be quoted of a much later date, by no means yielded a correspond- ing amount of benefit. It is of vast size ; at the same time, in the opinion of most if not all physicians accus- tomed to the treatment of insane patients, it is by no means adapted to the purposes for which it was origin- ally intended. It was built to accommodate 200 pa- tients, who are indisputably treated with great skill, kindness, and attention. In fact, it would be impossible to mention a lunatic asylum in England where greater sympathy and care are lavished on the patients, but at what cost we shall presently show. It should be men- 2 92 THE CITY AS IT IS. tioned, however, that at the opening of the present hospital, Lord Eldon, then Lord Chancellor, made some alterations in its management. The sole control and government was taken from the City of London, leaving, however, the Corporation of the City the greatest powers, but adding others to them, with what beneficial results it would be impossible to say. On one point the Lord Chancellor made an alteration, possibly, perfectly consistent with his peculiar interpre- tation of the word " charity," which may very probably differ from that of the reader, and is the better worth quoting as another specimen of the utter disregard often paid by the Court of Chancery to the original intention of many of our charitable endowments. Prior to its removal to Southwark an excellent rule existed in the admission of patients to this charity. Although it had been considered from the time of its original charter as the pauper lunatic asylum of the metropolis, a regulation was made that any patient having money of his own, or who had relations capable of assisting him, should pay a weekly sum for his support, more or less in proportion with his means. If totally destitute, the patient was admitted gratuitously. Lord Eldon amended this rule, and the amendment is maintained, we believe, up to the present day. By it all those who are too poor to contribute anything towards their sup- port are rigorously excluded, while those who are able of themselves, or through their friends, to contribute something in return for the benefits received are admitted gratuitously. By this change the purely charitable CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 293 intention of the original endowment is in great part lost, and instead of being, as was intended, the pauper lunatic asylum of the metropolis, it is now a retreat for the lower middle-class patients. Let us now consider at what cost these three City hospitals are worked, what is their gross income, as well as what good might be done were they more economically managed; and if we do not fully prove the theory of Lord Brougham, that if our hospitals were carefully managed their gross revenue would be suffi- cient for the maintenance of the whole sick poor of the metropolis, we shall be able to show that the waste alone to be detected in the management of these three hospitals would, in itself, do an amount of extra good scarcely inferior to that which they at present perform. Anticipating an objection which may possibly be made, that to diminish the expenditure of these hospitals would be to deprive the patients of many of the com- forts and benefits they receive, we will draw a com- parison -bet ween the expenditure and good derived from another hospital more economically managed, and which, for the skill of its medical and surgical staff, and general kindness and attention bestowed on the patients, is, without claiming any superiority, fully equal to either of the great City hospitals. We allude to the West- minster. As the reader is possibly aware, the Westminster Hospital is situated near the north bank of the river Thames, and nearly opposite that of St. Thomas's on the south bank. From its first institution till the 294- THE CITY AS IT IS. present day its physicians and surgeons have been among the most eminent in London. If St. Bartholo- mew's can boast of Harvey, the supposed discoverer of the circulation of the blood, the Westminster with fully as much reason can boast of Chiselden and Pyle, whose reputations were fully equal, as surgeons, physiologists, and anatomists, to that of Harvey, and founded on more certain data. In later times it num- bered among its staff the names of Lynn, White, Sir Anthony Carlisle, Guthrie, Sir George Tothill, Bright, and many others ; and at present, Bond, the eminent professor of medical jurisprudence, Dr. Basham Barnard Holt, Fenshaw, Macnamara, and others no less eminent. Of the appointments of the hospitals none are superior in London, and the cures effected equal to any. The nursing, one of the most important elements in the present practice of medicine, may stand in honourable competition with the most celebrated hospitals in Europe. If the patients in St. Thomas's Hospital are nursed by ladies from Miss Nightingale's school, and St. Bartholomew's by those of St. John's House, or any other equally celebrated institution, those in the Westminster are under the charge of ladies trained in the celebrated school established by the late lamented Lady Augusta Stanley, and are in the performance of their duties directly under the superintendence of Miss Mary Merryweather, who founded and for several years superintended the cele- brated nursing institution attached to the great hos- pital in Liverpool, while the subordinate officials are CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 295 as efficient as in any other hospital in the metropolis. With such a staff as this it must be evident that any one doubting the skill and attention bestowed upon the patients must be difficult indeed to convince. Let us now ascertain at what cost this valuable in- stitution is carried on, not simply without parsimony, but with ample liberality, if in this instance at least the tree may be judged by its fruits. The West- minster Hospital contains at an average 210 in-patients. It is maintained partly by endowments and partly by annual subscriptions and donations. The annual cost of the establishment, including the maintenance of patients, drugs, surgical instruments, salaries for offi- cials and servants, and establishment charges of all descriptions, including rates and taxes, amounts to 8,540 a year. To this cost should be added house- rent or the annual value of the building and ground on which it stands. True, the building is freehold, belong- ing to the charity, but its value has been estimated at 30,000 ; but to meet any objection which may be made as to its being less than the present value, seeing that it was made some ten years since, we will assume its value at 50,000, which, at four per cent, interest, would make, house-rent included, the cost of each bed between 50 and 60 per annum. Our reason for including the amount of rental is, that the endowed charities have the somewhat unfair habit o^ concealing, when they state their revenues, the value of the buildings and ground on which the institution in question stands. Let us now attempt to form an estimate of the re- 296 THE CITY AS IT IS. venues of the three great City hospitals, and commence with that of St. Thomas's. This hospital, like that of the "Westminster, is maintained by endowments and subscriptions, but both are] greatly in excess of the Westminster, proportionate numbers of patients taken into consideration. We find by the report of the Charity Commission, some time prior to the purchase of the hospital by the railway, that its endowed income was then quoted at 42,800 a year, and which has since, by the great rise in the value of property, in- creased so much that it may now fairly be estimated at 50,000. To this, however, should be added the value of the ground and building on which, as we stated before, so large a sum had been expended; and esti- mating the cost of both at only 400,000 (in reality it far exceeded that amount), and calculating interest at four per cent., it would raise the gross annual revenue of the hospital to 65,000 per annum. At present the number of patients in the hospital is stated (and we believe correctly) to be 400. The gross annual revenue of St. Bartholomew's Hos- pital is much larger than that of St. Thomas's, but the number of patients is about a third more. It has altogether about 600 beds, without counting those in a convalescent hospital at Hackney. Its income from endowments and other sources, the value of the re- versionary increase when present leases fall in, will certainly not be less than 65,000 per annum. To this, however, should be added the value of the build- ings and the ground on which they stand. To CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 297 arrive at a just valuation of these would be somewhat difficult ; but from the price lately offered by a railway company for Christ's Hospital, which abuts on St. Bartholomew's, it would be worth some 350,000, which at four per cent, would yield 14,000 per annum, making a total of 79,000 per annum as its real in- come. Bethlem Hospital, according to the report of the Charity Commissioners published some ' fourteen years since, was stated to be 23,854 19s. Id. ; but since that date the value of its endowments, in common with all other landed property, has greatly increased, and with its reversionary interests its present income may, without exaggeration, be quoted at about 30,000 per annum. To this, in like manner with the other hos- pitals we have named, must be added the value of the present hospital and the large space of ground on which it stands. The value of this ground and the buildings on it is certainly not less than 5,000 per annum (and that, too, at a very moderate valuation), making a total estimated value of not less than 35,000 per annum. The managers of this hospital state that its income is not beyond the amount required for its proper maintenance, but the reader may, with a little consideration, judge on that point for himself. Accord- ing to the last report published by its managers, its expenditure appears to us to be most extravagant. Among other items let us take one. The cost of the staff, including the superior officials, servants, and nurses for less than two hundred patients figures for 5,100 a year. Compare that amount with the cost 298 THE CITY AS IT IS. for staff at the Idiot Asylum at Caterham. There we find no fewer than 1,800 patients, who in every way are as well cared for as those in Bethlem, but the gross cost of the entire staff is only 6,361 per annum. It may possibly be said that the patients in Bethlem Hospital are of a description more difficult to manage than those of Caterham. But admitting, as we do, that patients suffering from acute mania require a greater amount of attention than imbeciles, we still maintain that the amount expended in Bethlem is excessive. As a proof, we may mention that in the Criminal Lunatic Asylum at Fisherton one of the largest and best managed in the kingdom, and where the patients were of the most dangerous class the cost did not exceed lls. per head per week, or 28 12s. per year. Let us now inquire if the funds of these three great City hospitals were as economically managed as the Westminster, where fully as much skill and attention is bestowed on the patients, and with fully as beneficial results, what amount of benefit might be derived from them ? In the first place, the total number of patients in these City hospitals amounts to about twelve hun- dred, and of course the funds would be amply sufficient to maintain them without any reduction in their num- bers. Out of the surplus, an addition of a hundred and fifty beds might be made to the Dreadnought Hospital, and another one hundred and fifty to the Poplar Hos- pital, both admirable but badly supported institutions, and much in want of extension and assistance. We have still a large surplus remaining to account CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 299 for, and we suggest that it might be employed in the following manner. "We have already brought under the notice of the reader the gross injustice inflicted on the working classes in the east of London by the removal of one of the City hospitals, St. Thomas's, in great part instituted for their benefit, to the western district in which it has since been erected. That injury might to a great extent be condoned in the following manner. The north-eastern and south-eastern districts of the metropolis contain an aggregate population little short of a million, a vast proportion of whom are of the working classes. For their accommodation and relief there is not one general hospital,* a fact which, to the honour of civilisation, can be found only in the richest (and, as it boasts itself, the most chari- table) city in the world. From the surplus remaining two hospitals might be built and maintained at the cost of the "Westminster of three hundred beds each, one in the north-eastern district, the other in the south-eastern. As the new St. Thomas's Hospital was intended to hold six hundred beds, instead of four hundred as at present, this arrangement would go far to supply the deficiency in hospital accommodation caused by its removal. * The London Hospital principally relieves patients from the neighbourhood of Whitechapel and the districts due east towards Stepney, as well as the poor on the line of the river ; Guy's Hospital principally those of Southwark and the districts by the line of the river towards Eotherhithe, &c. The localities alluded to above are on the south-east, Walworth, Camberwell, Peckham, Deptford, Green- wich, &c. ; on the north-east, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Dalston, &c. The Poplar and Dreadnought Hospitals are solely for men, the former admitting only surgical cases. 3 oo THE CITY AS IT IS. But we have still a considerable sum to deal with, and we would suggest that it might be applied to the relief of a certain class of cases which, neither within the walls of a hospital nor resident in their homes, receive the amount of consideration from the public they are by their misfortunes entitled to. We allude to incurable patients, and their name is legion. These are not admissible into our general hospitals, under the pretext that institutions of the kind were intended for the cure of patients, not to take charge of those who cannot be cured. Again, it is no uncommon matter, when a patient has been two months or something more in a hospital without any perceptible benefit, for his physician to consider him as incurable, and to discharge him, utterly ignoring the fact that if he was an object of sympathy when he entered the hos- pital, he was still more so when discharged, his malady no better, if not worse, and his power of supporting himself still less. Some of these make their way to the workhouse infirmaries, where they are not unfrequently cured, after having been pro- nounced incurable by the hospital staff again tending to prove that the whole medical science of the metro- polis is not solely confined to those physicians whose names are held in most repute by the public. Others return to their homes, or to those of their friends, where, if they are unable to attend at the hospital, they generally die. Possibly instances of this kind may have come under the reader's notice ; if not, they are very easily discovered, but, unfortunately, seldom looked for. CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES 301 After all, Dickens was right, when, speaking of our poorer classes, he said, " I think the best side of such people is almost hidden from us. What the poor are to the poor is little known excepting to themselves and God." If some of those gentlemen who are now so loudly boasting of the philanthropy of the heads of the medical profession, as shown by their attention and kindness to the sick poor, would investigate the vast amount of kindness to the sick exhibited by some of our grossly maligned working classes, they might easily find in very humble homes acts of untiring kindness and humanity to the helpless sick that, with the excep- tion of a majority of our nursing staffs, would put the philanthropy of our eminent and fashionable physicians far in the background. If any popular writer would make a collection of these cases, graphically but not sensationally written, he might publish a volume of far greater and more genuine interest than nine-tenths of those which at present issue from the press in such vast abundance. Another class of incurable cases, which from their chronic nature are not admitted into our hospitals, remains to be noticed, and these, unhappily, are to be found in great numbers. Formerly different attempts were made to receive a certain proportion of them into the general hospitals. True, St. Thomas's was only to receive " such cases as were curable ; " but St. Bartho- lomew's, by its original charter, had no clause whatever relieving them from the onus of receiving incurable patients. Afterwards the governors of the Middlesex 302 THE CITY AS IT IS. and Westminster Hospitals established in them wards for incurable patients, but not sufficiently large or liberally endowed to receive a tithe of the incurable patients who applied for admission. Later still two admirably managed hospitals were established for incur- able patients, one at Putney the other at Clapham, but neither by any means sufficiently extensive to meet the demands made upon them, leaving still many hundreds qualified for relief. It need hardly be said the presence of a helpless incurable patient in the home of a poor man must be a heavy tax upon the family, more espe- cially when the invalid is unable by his or her exertions to add anything to the limited family exchequer. Yet cases of this kind may be found by hundreds all cared for by members of their own family, stamping still deeper the truth of Mr. Dickens's remark. The Hos- pital for Incurables at Putney, the Hospital for the Cure of Paralysis in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, and, we believe, the Home for Incurables at Clapham, have established a certain, but unfortunately a very small, number of pensions. "We would now submit whether a pension system of the kind might not be established on the surplus still remaining of the waste of the three great City hospitals? Would it not confer a great benefit on the poor incurable patients at present receiv- ing no relief if a thousand pensions of 20 per annum were accorded them? And the funds left unappro- priated would be far more than sufficient for the pur- pose. There would still be a balance if the reader will kindly follow our calculations he may verify the CITY MEDICAL CHARITIES. 303 fact himself of some 35,000 per annum, which might go towards the maintenance of patients in the Small Pox or Fever Hospitals, or the endowments of scholar- ships at our medical schools. Or should the reader be of a captious disposition, he may place the whole amount to the reduction of any exaggeration he may think we have been guilty of in our honestly intended calculations. We now submit that we have sufficiently proved that the three great City hospitals have been managed in a disgracefully extravagant manner. If the City authorities have exercised any authority in the matter, they are greatly to blame; if they have not, with, as we maintain, the power still in their hands, their behaviour has been utterly inexcusable. CHAPTER XII. CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. T)ESIDES the three royal hospitals mentioned in the *-* last chapter, there are two others, in like manner virtually under the control and management of the City authorities, to be brought under the notice of the reader Bridewell and the Bluecoat School. It may be urged that so many alterations have been made in the government of these charities, that the Lord Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens of London are no longer in their corporate capacity answerable for any abuses or mismanagement which may be detected in them, and therefore it would be unjust to accuse them of being parties concerned in the matter. But whatever altera- tions may have taken place in the management, their original charters remain unrepealed; and if by any laches on their part their authority be diminished or lost, they are open to strong animadversion for their moral cowardice, neglect, or indifference, as the case may be. Let us commence with Bridewell. Its original charter is dated 26th of June, 7 Edward VI., 1553. CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 305 " Whereas," it says, " we pitying the miserable estate of the poor, fatherless, decrepit, aged, sick and infirm, and impotent persons, languishing under various kinds of diseases, and also of our special grace, thoroughly con- sidering the honest pious endeavours of our most humble and obedient subjects, the Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens of our City of London, who by all ways and methods diligently study for the good provision of the poor and every sort of them, and that by such reason and care neither children yet being in their infancy shall lack good education and instruction, nor when they shall obtain riper years shall be destitute of honest callings and occupations, whereby they may honestly exercise themselves in some good faculty and science for the advantage and utility of the Commonwealth, nor that the sick and diseased when they shall be recovered and restored to health may remain idle and lazy vagabonds of the state, but that they in like man- ner may be placed and compelled to labour, at honest and wholesome employments : Know ye that we as well for the considerations aforesaid as of our special grace and of our certain knowledge and mere motion, desiring not only the progress, amplification, and in- crease of so honest and noble a work, but also conde- scending in our name and by our royal authority to take upon ourself the patronage of this most excellent and most holy foundation now lately established, have given and granted, and by these presents do give and grant, to the Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of London all that our manor, capital messuage, and tene- x 3 o6 THE CITY- AS IT IS. ment, and our mansion house called Bridewell or Bridewell Place, with all and singular its rights, mem- bers, and appurtenances, situate, lying, and being in the parish of Saint Breyed in Fleet Street, London, and all and singular, houses, edifices, lands, tenements, rents, reversions, and services, gardens, void grounds, places* ways, easements, profits, and commodities whatsoever to the said house in Bridewell Place in any wise belonging or appertaining." After enumerating a number of valuable estates, both in London (especially mentioning the Savoy Palace or Hospital, in the Strand, and all the property and revenues belonging to it) and in different parts of the country, all of which were to be applied to the endowment of Bridewell Hospital, the charter goes on to show that although the Mayor and Citizens of London were to hvae the management of the charity, its benefits were not to be confined solely to the City. " And further we give and grant," it says, " for us our heirs and suc- cessors, to the aforesaid Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of London aforesaid, and their successors for ever, that it may and shall be lawful, as well to the aforesaid Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens for the time being, as to the same and such officers, ministers, or governors as the aforesaid Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens shall from time to time appoint or ordain to be officers, ministers, or governors under them of the said manor or house called Bridewell Place, or the other houses or hospitals assigned for the aforesaid poor and of two or three of them, at all times hereafter from CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 307 time to time, as well within the said City of London and the suburbs of the same as within our said county of Middlesex," &c. From an " Act of Common Council respecting the maintenance of Bridewell Hospital," passed in the reign of Elizabeth, 29th of May, 1590, it would appear that the livery companies took also a part in the government and maintenance of Bridewell Hospital. It is certain they were taxed, in common with the other royal hospitals, towards its support. The Act says : " Also it is by this the same authoritie aforesaide enacted, ordayned, and decreed that Mr. Richard Sal- townstall and Stephen Soame, Aldermen, Thomas Wil- ford and George Sotherton, Merchaunt Tailors, Thomas Cordell, Mercer, John Harvey, John Moore, and Ran- dall Morgan, Skinners, Simon Horspool, Richard Bowdler/John Quarles Benedict Barneham, and James Deane, Drapers, William Milward, Haberdasher, Humphrey Weld and Richard Gore, Grocers, and Thomas Bennett [trade illegible] or any eight or more of them, shall at some time or times and place by them to be appointed between this and the 24th day of June next, meete, and bye their good discrecions devise and set down some good meanes as well how the house of Bridewell shall be henceforth maintained, as well as how the arreayes that the same is run into shall be paid. And Henry Lovell appointed to warne them." Several other extracts might be taken from the records of the City of London as well as the charters on which the other royal hospitals were founded, all tending 308 THE CITY AS IT IS. to prove that Bridewell was under the full management and control of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London, but not one tending in even the most remote degree to remove it from their hands. Perhaps the best idea of the particular uses for which Bridewell Hospital was established may be formed from a report entered in the minutes of the Court of Aldermen, 29th March, 1644, 19 Charles I., entitled, "A report from the president, three treasurers, and eleven governors of St. Thomas, Christ's, and Bridewell Hospitals addressed to the Lord Mayor and Aldermen." Speaking of the latter hospital, the report recommends the Lord Mayor for the time being to order the constables and beadles of the wards to search from time to time for all sorts of rogues, vagrants, idle women and children which beg, wander, and lie idle in the streets, and bring them to Bridewell, to be seen and examined by the governors thereof, assisted by two governors of each of the other hospitals, and to dispose and sort the sick poor and lame who are unable to work to St. Bartholomew's or St. Thomas's Hospital, and the small children not able to work and born in the City to Christ's Hospital to be brought up and taught, and when twelve years old to send them back to Bridewell to be employed in some good occupation. And the stout and sturdy rogues and vagabonds, and the women and others of small strength, to be employed in Bridewell. The report was signed by the treasurers and eleven gover- nors, and the following note was made thereto : " We whose names are subscribed have perused this report, CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 309 and conceive it to be according to law, and may pro- duce good to the City. PETER PHEASANT, JOHN GREENES. The report being openly read in the Court of Aldermen was allowed of and ordered to be entered on the Records and to be performed in all things." From the above it will appear that Bridewell was considered at the time spoken of as the City work- house, the governors, however, having power to punish delinquents and vagabonds in a manner hardly con- sistent with our present ideas of poor-law jurisdiction. It continued in this double capacity till a very late date, and was even used till some four years since for the punishment of unruly City apprentices, but these only by order of the City Chamberlain; now, even that power has fallen into disuse. By the Bridewell Hospital Report, 1869, it seems that one apprentice had in that year been detained in custody of the hos- pital authorities for twenty-one days, eleven for fourteen days, and one for seven days. A note in the report also says that even in these cases a part of the time for which their committal was made out was remitted. The next year the governors refused to take charge of any more unruly apprentices. For many years the duties and objects for which Bridewell Hospital was originally instituted dropped off till a very few of them remained unimpaired at the commencement of the present century. The establish- ment of the poor-law in the City and the introduction of parish workhouses rendered useless their labours in that department ; and the organization first of the City 310 THE CITY AS IT IS. watch, and afterwards of the police force, did away with their duties of custodians of the peace. True they had some prisoners under their control, and from documents still remaining without taking into con- sideration Hogarth's well-known plate on the subject their rule appears to have been a severe if not a salu- tary one. But the establishment of more prisons and houses of correction, not to take into consideration the new prison at Holloway, did away with that part of the duties of the Bridewell governors, till at length they were only left the school already mentioned. It would be unjust to say that these schools, now known as King Edward's Schools, have not been well managed, so far as their original uses are concerned those of a pauper charity school ; and even in the pre- sent day the education the children receive is certainty not superior to that given in the schools under the management of the Metropolitan School Board, but at what cost we shall 'presently show. In an entry in Pepys's diary, October 3rd, 1664, he says, " I visited Bridewell, and there I did with great pleasure see many pretty works, and the little children employed every one of them to do something, which was a very fine sight, and worthy of encouragement." Industrial or technical education was then, as now, a portion of their training the school, in fact, at its commencement being the industrial school attached to Christ's Hos- pital. Other writers since Pepys's time have also spoken in terms of high commendation of the training the children received in these schools, but all describing CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 311 them in the light of charity schools, in which children received only that class of education which would enable them to start in life either as domestic servants or in some humble handicraft. Even at the present day, when the value of good education among the industrial classes is admitted by all, it is but little better. Al- though the pupils are indisputably treated with great kindness and consideration, their education, as well as their food and raiment, is not superior to that of the children in Mr. Spurgeon's orphanage at Clapham, or the children in the High Church Orphanage at Clewer, although it must be admitted that in these latter insti- tutions they are especially well cared for. At the same time, from the balance-sheet in the report of the governors of these schools in 1872, it would appear that the number of officials employed in King Edward's Schools, as well as the salaries they receive, might be considered sufficient to provide them with an education quite equal to that given in the higher classes of King's College, the Westminster, or University College Schools. In defence of this opinion we will adduce a few items from the balance-sheet of King Edward's Schools, and then submit to the reader whether we were not justified in coming to such a conclusion. By it we find that solely to look after the spiritual welfare of these 217 charity children there were in 1872 two chaplains, the senior having a residence partly fur- nished and 450 a year salary, and the assistant chap- lain 120. Beyond these there was a powerful staff of schoolmasters, trade instructors, and other officials 312 THE CITY AS IT IS. employed on the establishment, amounting in all to no fewer than twenty-four persons, being at the ratio of one official or servant for every nine charity children.* The cost of education and superintendence of the 217 children was in the year 1869 no less than 1,840 a year a large proportion of the officials being also boarded and lodged. By the governors of King Edward's Schools' Report, published 1869, they admit even at that date the gross income of the foundation to be no less than 18,175 16s. Qd. per annum ; but this is far beneath its present value. In the amount named, the value of the ground on which Bridewell then stood and that of the school, which has since been removed into Surrey, are both omitted, the whole, at the lowest computation, being worth at least 2,000 per annum. But there are two other items to be taken into con- sideration. The reader may possibly remember a large plot of ground, stretching at the rear of the houses on the western side of the road leading to Blackfriars Bridge, and reaching nearly from Fleet Street to the gasworks near the river. This ground, which is of enormous value, and which remained idle and unproductive for nearly twenty years, is the pro- perty of Bridewell Hospital. It has, however, latety been let on building leases, not only affording a large * At the time the report was printed we are informed that the managers of the charity intended to increase the number of children to 300. But admitting this to have heen done without any increase of the staff, the number of officials was far in excess of that required for the instruction and superintendence of the children in the schools. CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 313 and immediate increase to the revenues of the charity, but a reversionary value as well. To this should also be added the proportionate increase in the value of property in London and elsewhere during the last eight or nine years, and of which the estates with which Bridewell was endowed have received their full share. All these things being taken into consideration, it would be no exaggeration to assume the gross income of Bridewell Hospital to be no less than 25,000 per annum. Of ;the revenue of the hospital the sum of 565 16s. a year is put down as salaries totally apart from the schools ; but as the whole of the uses of Bridewell appear, with the exception of the schools, to have become extinct, it is difficult to understand what the duties of the officials may be who receive that amount in return for their services. Wealthy as the Bridewell Hospital may be, and small in proportion to their cost as may be the benefits derived from it, in both cases it is surpassed by the remaining royal hospital under City control and ma- nagement the Bluecoat School, or Christ's Hospital. It would be impossible to name an institution in Europe established on more purely Christian prin- ciples than the Bluecoat School, nor one which, at divers times, has been more or less perverted from the uses it was intended for. Stow, in his "Summerie," 1556, speaking of Christ's Hospital, says, " It was established to take the chylde out of the strete, which was the seede and increase of beggury, by reason of ydle bringing up. And to nouryshe the said chylde in 314 THE CITY AS IT IS. some goode learninge, and exercise profitable to the commonweale." He goes on to say that in one month from the opening of the school, November 21st, 1552, "chyldren had been taken from the stretes to the numbre of fower hundred." Machyn also, in his "Diary," about the same time, makes frequent men- tion of the children in this school, all tending to prove that they were taken from precisely the same class of children as those which now come under the ministra- tions of the Poor-law Board. For example, in 1552 he mentions, on the occasion of a Christmas treat having been given to the children that "the boysse wore cape skotys " (Scotch caps). On the 22nd day of March, 1552, at the funeral of Mr. John Heths, " dwellyng in Fenchyrche Strette, there went affor him a hundreds chyldren of Gray Friars [Christ Church] boysse and gyrlles two and two together, and he gave them shurts and gyrdulls and makitors, and after that they had wey and figges and good ale." Again, in 1557, speaking of the Spital sermon, he mentions the children of Christ's Hospital being present : " And alle the chyldren of the hospital, boyth men chyldren and women chyldren, that be kepte with certayn landes and the cherete of the nobul Citie of London." By way of exciting the charity, doubtless, of the good citizens of London, they generally, he said, attended funerals, carrying green staves in their hands. The original charter of Christ's Hospital so closely in its wording resembles those of the other hospitals, and the full control of its funds and management CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 315. which it gives to the Lord Mayor, Commonalty, and Citizens of London is in like manner so explicit, that it "would be a useless waste of the reader's time to dwell at any length upon it. We shall, therefore, restrict ourselves to a few remarks relative to the changes which have been made in its management at different epochs, always, leaving, however, the authority of the Corporation unrepealed, though considerably circum- scribed. On the 30th September, 1567, 9 Elizabeth, a precept was issued by the Mayor to the governors of Christ's Hospital (as well as to the governors of the other royal hospitals) to provide a strong sure chest for their trea- sure chest, having three locks and keys, one to be kept by the treasurer, one by the president, and the third by an ancient governor, a member of the Common Council. The Mayor appears to have been very precise as well as authoritative in his directions : " We charge and command you that with convenient spede do provide a strong and sure chest to be your treasure chest, and that ye do place or cause to be placed the same chest in the most strongest and surest place in your saide house, and cause the same to be substantially fastened to some principall wall of the same house, with lynks of yron, so that the same be not movable, and that you do cause the saide chest to have three locks and three keys, &c. And that in the saide cheste ye do repose and bestowe all the money that is in your treasurer's handes, and lykewise do cause to be bestowed from tyme to tyme all such sommes of money as by 3 1 6 THE CITY A S IT IS. means cometh or hereafter shall come and be converted to the use of the saide house. And that ye shall not take out of the saide chest any some or sommes of money otherwise than with the consent of the said pre- sident, treasurer, and ancient commoner of the said house, always provided that the treasurer of the saide house for the tyme beinge shall have in his hands, as by way of trust for the necessaries of the said house to be provided aforehand with one hundred marks." After certain equally stringent directions with respect to book-keeping, auditing, and other matters, the precept concludes in a manner clearly proving that Christ's Hospital was considered at the time as an institution directly under the control of the Lord Mayor and civic authorities : " Faile ye not as ye tenden the honor of this Cittie of London and the welthe and good conty- niance of your said house. (Signed) BLACKWELL, Mayor." A modification of the liberal principles for the admis- sion of destitute children was made about the time of Charles I., at the same time practically admitting the control of the Mayor and citizens over the management of the institution. In a rule of the house touching the admission of children it says, " There shall be no chylde admitted into this hospitall except it be first declared to this house, by a certificate in writinge, by a vestry holden in the parishe by whom the suite is made, and the same to be subscribed by the alderman of the warde or his deputie, or of six of the auncients of the saide parish at the least, that the saide childe CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 317 was borne in lawful matrimonie, or else in no wise to be admitted And this ordinance touchinge the admission of children be not broken, except in cases of extremity where losse of life and perishing would pre- sently follow, if they be not received into the said hos- pital, which is to be considered by the treasurer and two of the almoners at the leaste, and the same childe to be entered into the courte book, and by the trea- surer and almoners to be underwritten, for the clerkes warrant in that behalfe." The following extract from the same rules respecting the education and training of the children in Christ's Hospital clearly shows the class for which the institu- tion was intended. It is headed, " For putting Children foorth to Service. Item. The treasurer, with one other of the governors at the least, shall put forth any of the children of this house to service, having a careful regard to whom they be put, chiefly that they be honest per- sons, and such as will be well able to keep them, and to bring them up to such facultie, service, or occupation as they may hereafter be good members of the common- wealth. "Whereas, without such regard taken, they may happen to become more poore than their poore parents and also become evil members, to the great griefe of such as relieve them daily in this house, and that as nighe as they can to binde them with none that be not freemen of this city ; and before they are put forth, being men children, they may write and reade and caste accounts, being founde apt thereto. And that suche of the children as may be very pregnant and very apt 3i8 THE CITY AS IT IS. to learning be reserved and kepte in the grammar schole, in hope of preferment to the universities, where they may be virtuously educated, and in time become learned and good members of the commonweale." Evelyn, in his Diary, mentions that he visited the Bluecoat Schools in 1637, when the above rules were still in force. " I likewise saw," he says, " Christ Church and Hospital, a very goodly Gothic building the hall, schools, and lodgings in great order for bringing up of many hundred poor children of both sexes. It is an exemplary charity." The rules above mentioned held good till after the great fire, and then several alterations were made as to the admission of children, which greatly tended to reduce the number of those absolutely destitute which were sent by the parishes the class, in fact, for whose benefit the institution was founded and greatly increas- ing the patronage of the aldermen and other members of the Corporation. Up to that time it would appear that no children were refused, and if any applied for whom there was no room in the house, they were boarded out till such time as they could be received. At the same time it must be admitted, that for some years afterwards but few real abuses could be detected in the administration of the school, nor were the new rules they issued open to much objection. They are dated February 9th, 1676, 29 Charles II. They were as follows : "1. That no children be taken but such as are the children of freemen of this City. CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 319 " 2. That no children be taken in but such as are living within the City and liberty thereof." (This was made void February 19th, 1677.) " 3. That no children be taken in under the age of seven years. "4. That no children be taken in but such as are orphans, wanting either father or mother or both. " 5. That none be taken in that are foundlings, or that are maintained at the parish charge. " 6. That none be taken in that are lame, crooked, or deformed, nor that have any infectious disease, as the leprosy, scald head, itch, scab, or that have the evil or rupture. " 7. That none be admitted but such as are without probable means of being provided for in other ways, nor without a certificate as therein mentioned." There was also another rule made, which, although not immediately relating to the admission of chil- dren, is worth quoting as showing how completely the administration of the hospital was under the Lord Mayor and Corporation of the City of London. Referring especially to the Lord Mayor, it says, " That in these rules there is first a particular pro- vision made for the Lord Mayor." It then continues, "Then, to testify the respect of the hospital to the aldermen as such, and bearing the chief place in the government of the City, there is a fixed settlement as to their presentation and preference before all others ; so that what was anciently but casual and uncertain is by this rule made certain. There is also a particular 320 THE CITY AS IT IS. respect to be paid to those aldermen that are of the house who have their turn as aldermen and their turn as governors." So far there appears to be nothing objectionable in the rules, but there then follows one which doubtless was fairly enough intended at the time it was made, but has in the end tended more to create the abuses to be found in the charity from the time it was made till the present day than possibly all the other rules put toge- ther. Speaking of the admission of children it says, " There is a care to be particularly taken for benefactors and for all governors who may be useful to the house and may be bountiful in their charity." There can be but little doubt that the passing of this rule opened the way to much corruption in the govern- ment of the Bluecoat School. True, its benefactors became far more liberal in their donations, and they canvassed others to contribute, using their patronage, however, to its fullest extent the while. The hospital had also many valuable legacies bequeathed to it, in fact it was supported in a very liberal manner ; but, unfortunately, abuses in proportion crept into its management. When these abuses had reached their highest point, a reformer appeared on the scene who effected a great but, alas ! not durable reformation, and this was no other than the celebrated Samuel Pepys. It is more than probable that the proximate cause of his interference in the matter, more than any other, was a ceremony which took place in consequence of two eccentric legacies which had been left to two pupils who CITY ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 321 had been educated in the school. In a letter, dated September 20th, 1695, to Mrs. Steward, he says, "One thing there is indeed which comes in my way as a governor of Christ's Hospital to hear of, which carries a little mirth with it, and indeed is very odd. Two wealthy citizens are lately dead, and have left their estates, one to a Bluecoat boy and the other to a Bluecoat girl in Christ's Hospital. The extraordinariness of which has led some of the magistrates to carry it on to a match, which is ended in a public wedding, he in his habit of blue satin, led by two girls, and she in blue, with an apron green and petticoat yellow, all of sarsnet, led by two of the boys of the house through Cheapside to Guildhall Chapel, where they were married by the Dean of St. Paul's, she given away by my Lord Mayor. The wedding dinner, it seems, was kept in the hospital hall . . . Bow bells are just now ringing, ding, dong, but whether for this I cannot presently tell; but it is likely enough, for I have known them ring on much foolisher occasions, and lately too." "Whether this was the first cause of Pepys turning his attention to the abuses and extravagancies to be found in Christ's Hospital it would be difficult to say ; but two years later we find the following entry in a report of the Court of Aldermen : " Letter and other papers from Samuel Pepys, Esq., relating to Christ's Hos- pital, being read, the Town Clerk was directed to pre- pare an answer, to be perused and approved by the Lord Mayor before sent. After many attempts to evade 3*2 THE CITY AS 77 IS. complying with the letter written by the Lord Mayor, insisting upon the governors of the hospital bringing their accounts before the Court of Aldermen, as well as answers to the accusation brought against them by Pepys of 'ill-management and misapplication of the revenue of Christ's Hospital,' a portion of the accounts was brought forward, but a greater portion under differ- ent excuses withheld. Even now, however, sufficient was shown to prove that great abuses existed in the administration of the hospital, and the Court of Alder- men determined to make a searching examination into the accounts. Pepys, instead of being further snubbed, as he appears to have been when he first brought the affair under the notice of the Court, now rose to high favour, and was presented with the freedom of the City, and on the following month, June 20th, 1699, we find this entry in the reports of the Court of Aldermen : " Sir John Moore, knight and alderman, and president of Christ's Hospital, representing unto the Court his great age and infirmity of body which rendered him unable for such attention and apprecia- tion of his own person as the trust and service of that hospital required, begged the Court to permit him to lay down his presidentship." The Court having granted his request, resolved, " That Samuel Pepys, Esq., having given so many eminent proofs of his zeal and vigilance for the interests of that hospital, and his ability to carry on and effect its reformation, the Court was of opinion that he was the most qualified person to be appointed, and the Court requested (it CITF ENDOWED SCHOOLS. 323 being an office of charity especially at this time) that he would accept thereof." Pepys seems to have set about his work with great energy, and was soon able to show that not only the greatest abuses existed in the management of the hos- pital, but liberal as had been the contributions it had lately received, its extravagance had been such that it was almost in a state of insolvency. He clearly proved these facts to the Court of Aldermen, and they resolved to place the government of the hospital more distinctly than before under the rule of the City authorities, " according to its ancient observances and uses." From that time to the present the charity has re- mained to all intents and purposes an institution under the control and authority of the Corporation of the City of London, although the practice of persons, paying a certain sum of money for the privilege of nominating children, and thereby becoming governors, has, per- haps, not left their authority quite as omnipotent as before. By the report of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, of which Henry Brougham (Lord Brougham) was chairman, the question of the authority of the Corporation was gone into somewhat minutely. The following are a few of the questions and answers : " Who are the governors of the hospital ? The Mayor and Commonalty and Citizens of the City of London, as represented by the Lord Mayor, Alder- men, and twelve of the Common Councilmen, chosen. 3>4 THE CITY AS IT IS. by the rest of the Common Council out of their body. " By what law or custom is the Corporation of the City of London so represented for the purposes of this charity? The Act of Parliament of the year 1782 settled the disputes between the City of London and the hospital. It is entitled, &c. Since the passing of this Act the share of the government of this hospital belonging to the Corporation of the City of London has become vested in the Mayor, Aldermen, and twelve Common Councilmen chosen by the whole Common Council. "Who are the governors besides the Corporation of the City of London? Noblemen and gentlemen of all ranks who become benefactors to a certain amount. " Then are the Committee to understand that the Mayor, each alderman, and each of the twelve common councilmen chosen by the rest of their body have all the privileges of individual governors? Yes, they have; each of them is*a governor, but the aldermen have exclusive rights. "Who is the head of the charity? A president, elected by the body of governors, and no instance has been known of its being other than an alderman of London. " Is he elected for life ? Yes, as long as he con- tinues to be an alderman. " How do the governors present to the charity ? The Lord Mayor presents two, one being extra as CITY ENDO WED SCHOOLS. 3 2 5 lord mayor ; the president, as president, two, and one as alderman ; the other twenty-four aldermen each one annually, provided any children are admitted. " Suppose the Lord Mayor was president ? He would have two as lord mayor and two as pre- sident." It may be seen by the above how completely Christ's Hospital is a City charity, and as such the Corpora- tion are fully open to censure should any extravagance or abuses be detected in its management. Let us now submit a short extract from the last report of the Charity Commissioners respecting Christ's Hospital, which was drawn up by Mr. Thomas Hare February 12th, 1864, and which appears to be as just and impartial a document as ever was published by that influential body. By it we find in that year, apart from the valuable estates with which the charity was endowed, the trustees had in the Bank of England no less than 635,000. Apart from other City patronage it appears that the Grocers' Company, in the year 1848, presented the charity the sum of 10,000, under the condition, however, that they should be allowed to have always six children in the school. Now, taking into consideration the average gross cost of a child in that school, they received for that act of philanthropy a return of six per cent. How many children pre- sented by them were sons of members of the grocers' trade is not stated. The expenditure in 1864 for the working staff of this charity school for 1,200 children was as follows : 326 THE CITY AS IT IS. *. d. Masters, teachers, and stationery . . 10,432 Medical staff, &c 1,500 Officers and clerks and residential charges 2,250 Steward, servants, beadles, Sec. . . 5,800 Pensions to retired officers . . 1,458 Total . 21,440 0. Mr. Hare calculated the gross THE CITY AS IT IS. inhabitants of the metropolis have no just reason to object either to the present expenditure or waste of the City let them still insist on some strong civic reform to the extent at least of effecting a great reduc- tion of the mismanagement, stupidity, and gluttony which at present characterize it. THE END. PP-nfTED BT V1BTUE AND CO., LIMITED, CITY EOAD, LONDON. MEMOIE OF NOKMAN MACLEOD, D.D. BY HIS BROTHER, THE REV. DONALD MACLEOD, D.D., One of Her Majesty's Chaplains. With Portraits and numerous Illustrations, 2 vols. demy Svo, 26s. " We once more commend to our readers a work which is a fitting monument, erected with the true self -forgetfulness of a loving brother and a faithful biographer, and which will leave the abiding impression that in Norman Macleod all who knew him mourn a devoted, gallant, and delightful friend, and his Church and country lost a magnificent champion of the good, the noble, and the true." Times. " The biographer's delicate duty has been performed with tact and good taste, and it is rare that one writing so soon after his hero's death is able to give so much completeness to his portrait." Daily A'ews. " Mr. Donald Macleod has done his work of compiling this memoir of his justly- celebrated brother with care and good taste. The introductory chapters give an interesting glimpse of a state of life and manners that is now well-nigh forgotten." Pall Mall Gazette. 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He writes with a practised pen, and good sense and good taste pervade the volumes." Scotsman. "The favourable impression made by a first reading is deepened by each subse- quent examination of the work." North British Daily Mail. " This book is a portrait, and it is so well done, that it may be taken as an ex- ample by writers who have such a delicate piece of work in hand. . . . That a man so free in thought, so bold in speech, so broad in charity, should be at the same time so simply devout, full of all the tremblings of the tenderest piety, is a lesson and example to us all." Blackwood? s Magazine. " You could not say where he was greatest, but you felt that everywhere he was a streaming fountain of influence, and a man among a million men." Fraser't Magazine. " A really good book. . . . We could venture earnestly to commend it to the consideration of the English clergy. . . . Brave and tender, manful and simple, profoundly susceptible of enjoyment, but never preferring it to duty ; overflowing with love, yet always chivalrous for truth ; full of power, full of labour, full of honour, he has died, and has bequeathed to us for a study, which we hope will reach far beyond the bounds of his communion and denomination, the portrait of a great orator and pastor, and a true and noble-hearted man." Church Quarterly Review. " A man of great faculty, whose genius was of the kind that would have justified itself in almost any direction. He might have been an artist, a great commander, an author of high rank. We think of him with an affection which increases ia the light of more intimate knowledge, as a true worker for others, a devoted, self- denying man." British Quarterly Review. " A valuable and interesting book. It is the life of a thorough man with boundless fun there is always strong sense and real earnestness." Westminster Review. 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