This bequest now consists of £110 7s. 6d. consols, the annual dividend upon which amounts to £4 2s.
In 1832 Elizabeth Ramsden left £500 reduced 3 per cent. stock, the dividend on which was to be applied in keeping in order a tomb and tablets in the parish churchyard and church, and the balance to be applied for the benefit of the poor of the parish.
In 1837 Mary Barnard made a gift on similar conditions, which is now represented by £110 7s. consols producing an annual dividend of £2 14s. 8d.
The application of all the above gifts is regulated by the order of the Court of Chancery, dated 23rd December, 1853, to which I referred just now when dealing with the Campden bequests, and which as regards those was (as it appears to me) fortunately abrogated by the decree of the Court of Appeal on the 27th May, 1881, putting those charities upon their present admirable basis.
According to this decree of 1853, the income from the gifts I have just been detailing has to be divided into eighty-eight parts as follows:—
| 25 | 88ths to S. Mary Abbot’s district, |
| 9 | 88ths to S. Barnabas, |
| 21 | 88ths to Holy Trinity, Brompton, |
| 6½ | 88ths to S. Mary Boltons, |
| 17 | 88ths to S. John’s, Notting Hill, |
| 9½ | 88ths to S. James’, Norland, |
and their respective proportions are distributed to the poor of these districts by the Incumbents and Churchwardens of each district.
The income from these gifts during the year ending Easter, 1890, was £93 8s. 5d.
I for one venture to doubt whether this method of distribution is the best possible.
In the first place it is altogether disproportionate to the present population and to the localities now inhabited by the poor residents in the parish. As we all know, a larger proportion both of population and poor now reside in that part of the parish north of the Uxbridge Road, yet the districts of S. John’s, Notting Hill, and S. James’, Norland, which according to the order in question occupy the whole of the northern part I am alluding to, receive only 26½ 88ths, which for the year ending Easter, 1890, amounted to £28 1s. 8d., far less than their due proportion.