Sweet Hampstead and Its Associations

by Caroline A. White

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.