Ridduck's Trust, for putting poor boys out apprentice, was devised in 1728, the property consisting of a farm at Winson Green. By direction of the Court of Chancery, the income is now divided, £70 to Gem Street Free Industrial School, and £20 to the British School, Severn Street. The Trustees include the Mayor, the Rectors of St. Martin's, St. Philip's, St. Thomas's, St. George's, several Nonconformist ministers, and the Registrar of the Society of Friends.
Preaching Sermons.—By Salusbury's Charity, 1726, the Rectors of St. Martin's and St. Philip's are entitled to the sum of 15s to preach sermons once a year for the benefit of the Blue Coat School—Ingram's Charity, 1818, consisting of the yearly interest of £500 4 per cent. India Stock, was intended to insure the preaching of an annual sermon on the subject of kindness to animals (especially to the horse) by a local clergyman of the Established Church, but the Governors of King Edward's School, who are the trustees, have obtained the sanction of the Charity Commissioner to a scheme under which sermons on kindness to animals may take the form of one or more free lectures on the kind treatment of animals, and especially of the horse, to be delivered in any place of public worship, or other building or room approved by the trustees, and not necessarily, as heretofore, by a clergyman of the Established Church, and in a church.
Scripture Reading.—In 1858 Admiral Duff left a sum of money, which brings in about £45 per year, for the maintenance of a Scripture Reader for the town of Birmingham. The trustee of this land is the Mayor for the time being, and the Scripture Reader may be heard of at the Town Clerk's office.
The Whittingham Charity, distributed at St. James's, Ashted, in March, furnishes gifts to about eighty poor people (principally widows), who receive blankets, sheets, quilts, flannel, &c., in addition to bread and coal.
Philosophical Society.—A society with this name was formed in 1794 for the promulgation of scientific principles among mechanics. Its meetings were held in an old warehouse in the Coach Yard, and from the fact that many workmen from the Eagle Foundry attended the lectures, delivered mainly by Mr. Thomas Clarke, the members acquired the name of "the cast-iron philosophers." Another society was formed in 1800, for the diffusion of scientific knowledge amongst the middle and higher classes, and by the year 1814 it was possessed of a handsome Lecture Theatre, a large Museum, with good collections of fossils and minerals, a Library, Reading Room, &c., in Cannon Street. Like many other useful institutions of former days, the philosophical has had to give way to the realistic, its library of dead men's writings, and its fossils of the ancient world, vanishing in face of the reporters of to-day's doings, the ubiquitous throbs of the "Walter" and "Hoe" steam presses resounding where erst the voice of Science in chronicling the past foreshadowed the future.
Pillory.—This ancient machine for the punishment of prigs formerly stood in High Street. The last time it was used was in 1813. We pillory people in print now, and pelt them with pen and ink. The Act for abolishing this method of punishment was not passed until June 30, 1837. What became of the pillory here is not known, but there is, or was lately, a renovated specimen of the article at Coleshill.
Pinfold Street takes its name from the "pound" or "pinfold" that existed there prior to 1752. There used to be another of these receptacles for straying animals near to the Plough and Harrow in Hagley Road, and a small corner of Smithfield was railed off for the like purpose when the Cattle market was there established. The "Jacob Wilsons" of a previous date held a field under the Lords of the Manor wherein to graze their captured cattle, but one of the Town Criers mortgaged it, and his successors lost their right to the land which was somewhere about Caroline Street.
Places of Worship.—Established Church.—In 1620 there were 358 churches in Warwickshire, 130 in Staffordshire, and 150 in Worcestershire; but St. Martin's, Edgbaston, Aston, Deritend, and Handsworth, churches were all that Birmingham could boast of at the beginning of last century, and the number had not been increased to a very large extent even by the year 1800. As will be seen from the dates given in following pages, however, there was a goodly number of churches erected in the first half of this century, about the end of which period a "Church extension" movement was set on foot. The success was so apparent that a society was formed (Jan., 1865), and in March, 1867, it was resolved to raise a fund of £50,000, for the purpose of at once erecting eight other new churches in the borough, Miss Ryland heading the list of donations with the munificent gift of £10,000. It is difficult to arrive at the amount expended on churches previous to 1840, but the annexed list of churches, built, enlarged, or repaired in this neighbourhood from 1840 to 1875, will give an approximate idea of the large sums thus invested, the whole of which was raised solely by voluntary contributions.
| Acock's Green | £6,405 |
| Aston Brook | 5,000 |
| Balsall Heath | 8,500 |
| Bishop Ryder's | 886 |
| Christ Church | 1,000 |
| Christ Church, Sparkbrook | 9,163 |
| Edgbaston | 2,200 |
| Hay Mills | 6,500 |
| Immanuel | 4,600 |
| King's Heath | 3,900 |
| King's Norton | 5,092 |
| Moseley | 2,491 |
| Saltley | 7,139 |
| St. Alban's | 2,800 |
| St. Andrew's | 4,500 |
| St. Anne's | 2,700 |
| St. Anne's, Moseley | 7,500 |
| St. Asaph's | 7,700 |
| St. Augustine's | 7,800 |
| St. Barnabas' | 3,500 |
| St. Bartholomew's | 1,260 |
| St. Clement's | 3,925 |
| St. Cuthbert's | 5,000 |
| St. David's | 6,185 |
| St. Gabriel's | 4,307 |
| St. George's Edgbaston | 1,583 |
| St. James's Edgbaston | 6,000 |
| St. John's, Ladywood | 7,200 |
| St. Lawrence's | 4,380 |
| St. Luke's | 6,286 |
| St. Martin's | 30,134 |
| St. Matthew's | 4,850 |
| St. Matthias's | .5,361 |
| St. Mary's | 4,503 |
| St. Mary's, Selly Oak | 5,400 |
| St. Nicholas' | 4,288 |
| St. Paul's | 1,400 |
| St. Philip's | 9,987 |
| St. Saviour's | 5,273 |
| St. Silas's | 4,677 |
| St. Stephen's | 3,200 |
| St. Stephen's, Selly Oak | 3,771 |
To the above total of £228,336 expended on churches in or close to the borough, there should be added £57,640 expended in the erection, &c., of churches close at hand in the adjoining diocese of Lichfield; £25,000 laid out at Coleshill, Northfield, and Solihull (the principal residents being from Birmingham); and a still further sum of £150,000 spent on Church-school buildings. These figures even do not include the vast amounts invested for the endowments of the several churches and schools, nor is aught reckoned for the value of the land or building materials where given, nor for the ornamental decorations, fonts, pulpits, windows, and furnishings so munificently lavished on our local churches. Since the year 1875 it has been calculated that more than £100,000 has been devoted to similar local church-building purposes, so that in less than fifty years much more than half-a-million sterling has been voluntarily subscribed by the Churchmen of the neighbourhood for the religious welfare and benefit of their fellow men. Still there is room for more churches and for more preachers, and the Church Extension Society are hoping that others will follow the example of the "Landowner," who, in the early part of the year (1884) placed £10,000 in the hands of the Bishop towards meeting the urgent need of additional provision for the spiritual wants of the inhabitants.—Short notes of the several churches can alone be given.