THE FATE OF A REFORMER.
I have had occasion to speak of Mr. Abrahams’ pamphlet[304] several times in the course of these pages, a publication that fell like a bomb in an unexpectant place, and aroused among the well-to-do inhabitants of Hampstead anything but gratitude.
This gentleman, who had ‘a way,’ he tells us, ‘of looking into things for himself,’ having become a parishioner of St. John’s, proceeded to act as he had done when resident in St. Luke’s, London, where his scrutiny into parochial transactions had resulted in a saving to Government of upwards of £2,000, and a reduction of the poor rates from 4s. 8d. in the pound to 3s., a result that led to an annual commemoration of the event at Canonbury House.
But the people of Hampstead did not desire to be saved from themselves, and resented this new inhabitant’s interference with indignation. There is something very amusing in Mr. Abrahams’ account of the proceedings.
Provided with a list of the names of the inhabitants, he called on the overseer of the parish and requested he would return it to him with the figures at which they were rated to the poor. Whereupon the irate overseer demanded to know if he came to disturb the harmony that existed among the parishioners in a parish where everything was properly conducted; they wanted no looking after, and therefore he should treat his request and the list accompanying it with the contempt they deserved by setting his pipe alight with the latter. Upon which Mr. Abrahams made no more requests to the courteous official, but possessed himself by other means of the amounts to which the inhabitants were assessed, and drew public attention to the matter by the publication of his pamphlet. It would have been well for parishes generally had they possessed a representative as energetic as this new parishioner of St. John’s, for the ignorance and dishonesty his pamphlet disclosed appears to have been pretty general.
Six years later (1817) we find Sir Walter Scott writing to his friend Mr. Moratt, who had himself written a pamphlet on the subject, ‘Pray let me have your pamphlet on the poor-rates as soon as it is out. It is an Augean stable; it is the very canker in the bosom of the country, and no small claim will he have on the gratitude of England who can suggest a practical remedy.’
But the people of Hampstead, until they had tasted the fruits of Mr. Abrahams’ interference, thought otherwise. At that time they were paying from the inequalities of the rates 4s. 8d. in the pound poor rates, and 1s. 9d. in the pound for lighting, watching, and repairing the roads.
In the happy days which preceded the appearance of this reformer, neither the parson, vestry clerk, nor beadle paid rates, and, as has elsewhere been said, the landlord of the Spaniards Inn enjoyed the same pleasant immunity. The Lady of the Manor (Lady Wilson) was rated at £100 for the Heath, to which the critical Abrahams objects that ‘when the rate was made, and till within the last few years, when so great an impetus had been given to building, sand, that now sold at 4s. 6d. a load, and gravel[305] at 6s. per load, had sold for 2s. 6d. and 4s. 6d.;’ he rated the Heath therefore at five times the sum, £500.
Lord Erskine’s house, garden, pleasure-grounds, stables, coach-house, etc., were also rated at £100, and very few proprietors were rated higher.
The following are the places named in his report: Church Street, Hampstead Hill, the Lower Flask Walk, New End, the Well Walk and thereabouts, the Square, part of the Heath, the Terrace, Nag’s Head side, Frognal, the Heath, and North End, the whole of which produced at that time £21,078, but might, according to Mr. Abrahams’ rating, produce above a fourth more, or £26,788, and reduce the poor rate by 1s. 2d. in the pound. Amongst the land-owners mentioned at this period are the names of Neave, Todd, Milligen, Holford, Hoare, Lord Mansfield; Everett (late Perceval), Belsize House, Haverstock Hill; Lady Watson, Well Park—a list not very different from Carey’s notes of the inhabitants a twelvemonth later, in the fifth edition of his ‘Book of the Road,’ 1812.[306] He is describing the Barnet road, which led up to and skirted Hampstead Heath: