Famous Givers and Their Gifts

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

In 1721, when Mr. Guy was seventy-six years of age, he leased a large piece of ground of St. Thomas's Hospital for a thousand years at £30 a year, to erect upon it a great hospital for incurables; "to receive and entertain therein four hundred poor persons, or upwards, laboring under any distempers, infirmities, or disorders, thought capable of relief by physic or surgery; but who, by reason of the small hopes there may be of their cure, or the length of time which for that purpose may be required or thought necessary, are or may be adjudged or called incurable, and as such not proper subjects to be received into or continued in the present hospital, in and by which no provision has been made for distempers deemed or called incurable."

While Mr. Guy had primarily in mind the poor and incurable, and the insane as well, in his will he directed the trustees to use their judgment about the length of time patients should remain, either for life or for a short period. Mr. Guy at once procured a plan for his hospital, and in the spring of 1722 laid the foundations. He went to the work "with all the expedition of a youth of fortune erecting a house for his own residence." The original central building of stone cost £18,793. The eastern wing, begun in 1738, was completed at a cost of £9,300; the western wing, in 1780, at a cost of £14,537.

Mr. Guy lived to see his treasured gift roofed in before his death, which occurred Dec. 27, 1724, in his eightieth year. In a little more than a week afterwards, Jan. 6, 1725, his hospital was opened, and sixty patients were admitted.

After the death of Mr. Guy one thousand guineas were found in his iron chest; and as it was imagined that these were placed there to defray his funeral expenses, they were used for that purpose. His body lay in state at Mercer's Hall, Cheapside, and was taken with "great funeral pomp" to the Parish Church of St. Thomas, Southwark, to rest there till the chapel at the hospital should be completed. Two hundred blue-coat boys from Christ's Hospital walked in the procession, and sang before the hearse, which was followed by forty coaches, each drawn by six horses.

Mr. Guy had not forgotten these "blue-coat boys" in his will, and left a perpetual annuity of £400 to educate four children yearly, with preference for his own relatives. The boys from Christ's Hospital always interest tourists in London. They wear long blue gowns, yellow stockings, and knee-breeches. No cover is worn on their heads, even in winter.

This school was founded by the boy king, Edward VI., for poor boys, though his father, Henry VIII., gave the building, which belonged to the Grey Friars, to the city of London, but Edward caused the school to be established. It is a quaint and most interesting spot, where four queens and scores of lords and ladies are buried,—Margaret, second wife of Edward I.; Isabella, the infamous wife of Edward II.; Joan, daughter of Edward II., and wife of David Bruce, King of Scotland; and others. Twelve hundred boys study at the hospital. Lamb, Coleridge, and other famous men were among the blue-coats. The latter tells some interesting things about the school in his "Table-Talk." "The discipline at Christ's Hospital in my time was ultra-Spartan; all domestic ties were to be put aside. 'Boy!' I remember Boyer saying to me once when I was crying the first day of my return after the holidays, 'boy! the school is your father; boy! the school is your mother; boy! the school is your brother; the school is your sister; the school is your first cousin, and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relatives. Let's have no more crying!'

"No tongue can express good Mrs. Boyer. Val Le Grice and I were once going to be flogged for some domestic misdeed, and Boyer was thundering away at us by way of prologue, when Mrs. B. looked in and said, 'Flog them soundly, sir, I beg!' This saved us. Boyer was so nettled by the interruption that he growled out, 'Away, woman! away!' and we were let off."

While Mr. Guy remembered the blue-coat orphans, he seemed to have remembered everybody else in his will. So much were the people interested in the lengthy document with its numerous gifts, that the will went through three editions the first year of its publication. Mr. Guy gave to every living relative, even to distant cousins—in all over £75,000. These were mainly gifts of £1,000 each at four per cent, so that each one received £40 a year. These legacies were called "Guy's Thousands." If the recipients were under age, the interest was to be used for his or her education and apprenticeship.

One thousand pounds were given for the release of poor prisoners for debt in London, Middlesex, or Surrey, in sums not to exceed five pounds each. About six hundred persons were thus set at liberty. Another thousand pounds were left to the trustees to relieve "such poor people, being housekeepers, as in their judgments shall be thought convenient." The interest on more than £2,000 was left for "putting out children apprentices, nursing, or such like charitable deed."

Then followed the great gift of nearly a million and a half dollars for the hospital. After the buildings were erected, the remainder was to be used "in the purchase of lands or reversions in fee simple, so that the rents might be a perpetual provision for the sick." Considerably over a million dollars were thus expended in purchasing over 8,000 acres in Essex, a large estate of the Duke of Chandos, for £60,800, and other tracts of land and houses.