Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

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.