THE TURTLE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION
FOR
THE RELIEF OF DESTITUTE ALDERMEN.
We are glad to inform our readers that a Society, with the above benevolent motive, is in the course of formation. We need not say that, in the state of extreme destitution to which the poor Aldermen are likely, in another year, to be reduced, such a society, like every other society that has hitherto been started, will supply a great vacuum. The use of Turtle to an Alderman has become a sort of second nature; and when, by circumstances over which—unlike the City Funds—he has had no control, he is deprived of that great humanising and aldermanising necessity, we need not say that a very great vacuum will be created in his stomach. It is to fill that vacuum—which, if filled by the Alderman's own resources, would cause a vacuum in his pocket as great as the one that already exists in his mind—that a few charitable individuals have joined together in sympathy and guineas to relieve the wants of a large luxurious class of their fellow-countrymen.
Until the prospectus, in due satin paper and gilt-edge form, is issued, we beg to dot down a few of the principal features of this benevolent association:—
Prince Albert is to be President of this new charity, if he will only accept it, in return for the statue which the Aldermen have been trying to get up in his honour, in the hope that they may be represented on the pedestal in some humble capacity—either as hanging on to his Royal Highness's coat-tails, or else kissing his princely boots.
Committees will be appointed to visit the different Wards, and some of the highest ladies in the land have been most eager in applying for this charitable office.
Aldermen who have passed the chair will be allowed their three basins of Turtle a week. Those, who have not yet come to that awful pass, will only receive their one basin, of the usual size of those which a person pays five shillings for at Birch's.
On the 9th of November—the anniversary of the grand Lord Mayor's Day—the whole body of Aldermen are to be allowed, in addition to their Turtle, a small glass of iced Punch.