Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

BENEFACTORS OF HAMPSTEAD AND THE CHARITIES.

One of the earliest benefactors of Hampstead was Elizabeth, Dowager Viscountess Campden, widow of Sir Baptist Hicks, the donor of Hicks’s Hall to the county of Middlesex, and Lord of the Manor of Hampstead (whose town house, by the way, was Campden House, Kensington), ‘with whom, in all peace and contentment, she lived, his dear consort and wife, for the space of forty-five years.’

She bequeathed by will, dated February 14, 1643, the sum of £200 to trustees for the purchase of land of the clear yearly value of £10, ‘in trust to pay yearly for ever one moiety towards the better relief of the most poor and needy people that be of good name and conversation, inhabitants of the Parish of Hampstead; to be paid to them half yearly at or in the Church porch. The other moiety to put forth annually one poor boy, or more, of the said Parish to apprenticeship.’ To this gift was joined the sum of £40, bequeathed by an unknown but eccentric gentlewoman in the same year, for the purpose of distributing a halfpenny loaf (probably a crossed bun) annually on Good Friday morning to the inhabitants of Hampstead, rich and poor. Mad as a March hare! for what did the rich inhabitants of Hampstead want of a halfpenny loaf on Good Friday, or any other morning, even in the days when a crossed bun was a panacea for almost every ailment? Yet the bequest proved as bread cast upon the waters, and seen after many days; for being joined to Lady Campden’s £200, the whole was laid out in the purchase of fourteen acres of meadow-land at Child’s Hill, in the parish of Hendon, of the clear value of 10s. per acre.

When Park wrote, this estate was rented at £84 per annum; at the present day it must be worth much more, though on inquiry being made on the part of the Vestry into the management of this charity in 1873, it was said that it had not been developed.

Next on the list of Hampstead benefactions, in point of time, but far beyond the Campden charity in its importance, is what is called the Wells Charity, that gift of ‘six acres of waste land lying about and encompassing the Well of Medicinal Water,’ which the Hon. Susanna Noel of the one part, and the grantees of a piece of waste ground on the Heath of the other (on behalf of Baptist, Earl of Gainsborough, her son, then an infant), bestowed with all the improvements of the same in trust to the sole use and benefit of the poor of Hampstead.

On this land stand the houses and chapel in Well Walk, which when Park lived there produced £95 per annum, the trustees having at that period £1,100 stock in the Three per Cents. In 1859 the estate was said to be capable of producing from £2,000 to £3,000 per annum.

This charity is applied—or at least a portion of it—to apprenticing poor children of both sexes. The parents of the children must have been parishioners (not receiving parochial relief) for three years. The boys must be fourteen, the girls twelve years of age; and in order to enter an application it is necessary to obtain a recommendation from one of the trustees.

Appertaining to this charity there is also a fund for charitable distribution. Besides these gifts, certain poor widows and housekeepers were to be maintained and assisted by the benefactions of Elizabeth Shooter, spinster, the possible foundress of one or other of the four almshouses formerly existing at Hampstead, and one of which, being removed from a part of the Heath by Sir Francis Willes, and the site taken into his grounds at North End, was rebuilt by him in the Vale of Health. A Mrs. Mary Arnsted, of Hampstead, widow, assisted in this charity.

Francis Marshall, Esq., of Hampstead, in 1772 left £100 in the Three per Cents., to be distributed to poor housekeepers annually on Easter Day. Besides these, there is another important bequest, known as Stock’s Charity.

One would like to know the ancient whereabouts of the donor, John Stock, Esq., paper-stainer, citizen, draper, and philanthropist, while resident at Hampstead, who, having, as the white marble tablet in the north-east corner of Christ Church, London, tells us, ‘acquired with the strictest integrity considerable wealth, bequeathed the greater part of it at his death, September 21, 1781, for the promotion of religion and virtue ... the advancement of literature and art ... the relief of the decrepit and comfort of the blind.’ He specially bequeathed £1,000 (which, with the dividends that had accrued, and some donations from the trustees, purchased £2,000 in the Three per Cents.) to the minister and gentlemen parishioners of Hampstead for the purpose of clothing, educating, and putting out apprentice ten poor fatherless children of the parish—viz., six boys and four girls, the former to receive £5 as an apprentice-fee, the latter £2. Eight boys and seven girls received the benefit of this fund in 1812, and as it increased a proportionate number have benefited since then.

To these generous and useful charities many a poor widow has been indebted for the training and suitable settling in life of her otherwise destitute children; but for them many a household would have been broken up and scattered, and decently-born children and respectable matrons reduced to the dead-level of the poor-house. But the large compassion of those ancient benefactors of the beautiful village, and the more recent charities of honest John Stock,[302] have enlarged and widened, as it were, with the years and the number of the necessitous, and continue to strengthen the hands and comfort the hearts of the widows and fatherless with timely and efficient aid.

The funds of the Wells Charity have grown out of all proportion to the original intentions of the donor of them, and proposals have been made to utilize them for the benefit of a class above those whom the foundress desired to benefit. But the working classes themselves, or their representatives, have suggested many ways of using them without wresting them from their proper channel, by which not only they themselves, but the whole community, will be advantaged. It has been suggested to build baths and wash-houses, and a working men’s hall and institute; and who can doubt the reciprocal blessings to rich and poor that must spring from cleanliness, temperance, and those mental improvements which come of intelligent association and rational means of amusement?

Other charities exist in the parish—various bequests of small sums, which if amalgamated, like the Campden Fund with the £40 for annually bestowing halfpenny loaves, would create useful stock, and go far to relieve the ratepayers of the parish.

While these lines were being penned, we had the pleasure to see that a memorial to the Attorney-General, with Mr. Gurney Hoare at its head, had been signed to provide a working men’s club and institute at Hampstead with a portion of the revenue of the Wells Charity.

It has also been suggested, in accordance with the necessities of the times, that a larger premium be given with apprentices, to ensure better masters and mistresses. Some persons have even advocated a plan for improving the dwellings of the local poor, and others, again, a middle-class school for poor tradesmen’s children; but, unless the funds are capable of extension to cover the whole of these plans, the middle-class school scarcely seems to come within the scope of the Hon. Susanna Noel’s intentions. It appears the germ of a working men’s unsectarian club has been for some little time in existence, and that the want of class-rooms and other suitable premises has made the members, and the projectors and encouragers of it, actively alive to the prospect so appositely thrown open to them.

Soon, therefore, we may hope that a handsome building will arise—an ornament to the town and a monument to the memory of the foundress of the Wells Charity.

We have already alluded to the practical services rendered by Mr. Perceval and Mr. Montagu during their residence at Hampstead and in its neighbourhood. It would not be difficult to trace the seeds of the present anxiety for mental and social improvement on the part of local working men, and the desire to aid them in their advance on the part of their employers and friends, to the discussions of the Philo-Investigists, and the Sunday and night schools on Rosslyn Hill. Mr. Fearon’s philanthropy took a wider field: it belonged to no party, or time, or class; his efforts were for the freedom of human intellect, and the advancement through education of all. He belongs by right of residence to Hampstead.

There is in the churchyard a monument to two children of the Hon. and Rev. Edward John Tornour, a member of the noble family of that name, the seventh and, at that time, the only child of the Right Hon. Edward Garth Tornour, Earl of Winterton, Viscount Tornour, and Baron Winterton, who had been resident at Green Hill, Hampstead, for several years. Benevolence seems to have been a hereditary virtue of this noble family. Mr. Tornour took Holy Orders for love of the sacred office, and not for the emoluments of the Church; and previous to becoming a permanent resident of London, whither he was obliged to move for the sake of his health, he had accepted the offices of curate, afternoon preacher, and evening lecturer at Hampstead, where he resided till he could no longer bear the sharp air. While there he acted as a county magistrate and guardian of the poor. It is impossible to look at the engraved portrait of him, after a painting by Drummond, without feeling the fine nature of the man; the broad, full, philanthropical forehead, the large, sweet, compassionate eyes and kindly mouth, are full of benignity and goodness, though we are not aware that he benefited the parish he served pecuniarily. He was living there about, or shortly before, the date of Park’s History. The tears and blessings of the poor do not follow the unreal Christian minister, nor the unworthy magistrate, nor the uncompassionate guardian, and from the character given of him on his death, and which may be seen in the pages of the European Magazine, we venture to regard him as one of the Hampstead worthies.

We find the following notice in the columns of the Grub Street Journal:

‘Yesterday [April 16, 1736], of the gout in his stomach, Mr. Andrew Pitt, of Hampstead, one of the most eminent of the people called Quakers.’ After thirty years’ attention to business, he had, in the language of Voltaire, who corresponded with him, ‘the wisdom to prescribe limits to fortune and his desires, and settle in a little solitude at Hampstead.’ Ceasing from business, however, by no means prevented his active occupations in other ways.

At the beginning of this year (1736) all the Nonconformists of England were petitioning against the cruel Test Act, and Tithe Bill, and Mr. Pitt, as the representative of his ‘people,’ waited upon the Prince of Wales to solicit His Highness’s favour in support of the Quakers’ Tithe Bill. Perhaps there is no greater proof of the charm of manner ascribed to the Prince, and the tact with which he could soften even the refusal of a request when so minded, than the fact that, though Mr. Pitt failed, he came away greatly pleased with the Prince’s reply and his excellent notions of liberty.

It is evident that Voltaire had personally known Mr. Pitt.[303] He describes him as hale and ruddy, a perfect stranger to intemperance of any kind, and as never having suffered from sickness.

Another inhabitant who deserves notice was Mr. Thomas Hayes, who as a poor lad began life in the humble and unpromising capacity of a pot-boy at a local public-house, from which post he raised himself, ‘entirely by his own merit,’ to that of a surgeon. He received his knowledge of pharmacy from Collins, whom Park calls ‘the glossarial stalking-horse of Steevens.’ Mr. Hayes died May 7, 1787, beloved and regretted by his friends and neighbours, respected and unenvied. He was laid in his native churchyard in Maiden Lane.

Another inhabitant of Hampstead who has won the right to be remembered in a description of it was Mr. Thomas Mitchell, for twenty of his forty-eight years of life a schoolmaster in the town. He was the real founder of the Sunday-school, ‘and, by great application and attention to its interests, left it supported on a firm basis.’ He appears to have carried out with great earnestness the spirit of his self-made motto, ‘Do all the good you can.’ The poor were special objects of his care, and, without the aid of money, his practical good sense and actively philanthropical nature enabled him to strike out permanent means of assisting them. He was one of the Society of the Philo-Investigists, a society which, as we have elsewhere said, aimed at intellectual improvement, and suggested the benefit society afterwards known as the Flock of the Philo-Investigists. He did not live to see his benevolent scheme in action; but some years after his death, in 1799, it came into effect under the name of the Parochial Benefit Society.

In 1802 Josiah Boydell appears to have taken a very keen interest and an active part in the care of the poor inhabitants of Hampstead, and to have materially aided in procuring better quarters than the old workhouse at Frognal for the superannuants and ailing pensioners of the parish.