The number of the Livery returned in 1898 was 183. The Corporate Income was £37,500; the Trust Income was £500.
The advantages of being a member of the Company are as follows:
(1) Freemen are entitled to apply on behalf of their children for the Company’s presentations (six in number) to Christ’s Hospital; for the Company’s Scholarships for free education at the City of London School. The orphan children of freemen are alone eligible for the three presentations to the London Orphan Asylum.
Freemen are entitled to take apprentices.
Freemen, and widows and daughters of freemen, in needy circumstances may apply for relief, either temporary or permanent. Loans to freemen are practically abolished.
(2) Twelve months after a liveryman has been elected he is entitled, provided he live within twenty-five miles of the polling place, Guildhall, to be put upon the Register of Voters for the City, which entitles him to a vote at the election of Members of Parliament for the City; a liveryman is also entitled to vote at the election of the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs of London. The livery receive invitations from the Master and Wardens to the four public dinners in the months of November, February, May, and July, in each year, and at every fifth dinner an invitation for a friend as well.
In some years when the honorary freedom of the Company is bestowed on distinguished personages, there is an extra public dinner to which the livery are invited. At the public dinner in May, called the Restoration Feast, a box of sweetmeats is presented to every guest. Liverymen, and the widows and daughters of liverymen in needy circumstances may apply for relief, either temporary or permanent.
The Hall of the Company has always occupied the same site since the first erection in 1427, when the Wardens bought part of the demesne of Lord FitzWalter in Conyhope Lane.
This building perished in the Great Fire of 1666. A new hall was built, but in 1798-1802 this building was pulled down and rebuilt. Alterations and additions were made in 1827, when the present entrance into Princes Street was constructed. There were formerly three ways of access to the hall—one from the Old Jewry; one by the lane called Grocers’ Alley; and one by Scalding Lane from St. Mildred, Poultry, of which a scrap of the churchyard still remains. The two lanes opened on a small Place on the north side of which was Grocers’ Hall and on the south side the Poultry Compter.
The hall destroyed in 1666 would have become by this time historical as the place to which the Houses removed from Westminster in 1642 after the attempt to seize the five members on 4th January of that year. The Committee appointed by both Houses met first at Guildhall and adjourned to Grocers’ Hall to “treat of the safety of the Kingdoms of England and Ireland.” It was in this hall that the City entertained the Houses, June 17, 1645, in the midst of the Civil War, and on June 7, 1649, when the Civil War was over. For forty years, 1694-1734, the Grocers’ Hall was rented and occupied by the Governors and Company of the Bank of England.