SHOREDITCH
CHARITY &
SICKNESS
In the years 1833-5 John Ware conducted a
survey of Shoreditch's various parochial benefactors and found 116 gifts,
ranging from almshouse charities, to donations of a pulpit cloth and
cushion. The earliest dated from 1581;
medieval gifts would have been linked to chantries, with prayers for the
deceased donor, and all of these were swept away in 1547. Charitable bequests were common to all
Anglican churches, but Shoreditch's proximity to the City of London, combined
with its suburban charms, made it an ideal location for the almshouses and as
late as 1850 there were no less than eighteen in the parish, but many were to
vanish in the ensuing two decades and only one set of buildings now remain.
The Reformation ended the belief in the
giving of alms for remission of the soul from Purgatory, but from the
mid-sixteenth century there were more bequests intended to help the poor, many
from City of London merchants. The
Statute of Charitable Uses in 1601 improved the administration of charities and
contributed to greater generosity in the ensuing forty years. This was interrupted by the Civil War, the
Commonwealth years, and financial pressures on the merchant community in the
reigns of Charles II and James II.
After 1688 the flow of gifts increased, with donors able to establish a
school or an almshouse and make provision for an income to maintain the foundation
for the future. But from the 1690s
donations could be made through subscriptions to some of the newer bodies, like
the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge or to older hospitals
for the sick. Almshouses were less
appropriate for subscription funding, since gifts could only be used for
pensions of the almspeople, salaries of officials and the maintenance of the
buildings, and there was a gradual decline in new foundations after 1735. It was not until the beginning of the
nineteenth century that there was a revival in interest in almshouses, leading
to the rebuilding of some and additional endowments for others in the period up
to 1850, after which the fashion for "giving" was to change again.
The history of almshouses in Shoreditch
reflects this pattern. The earliest was
established under the will of John Fuller, a judge and sometime Treasurer of
the Inner Temple, whose will of 1592 directed that two almshouses be built; one
in Stepney for twelve men, and the other, for twelve women, in Shoreditch. Fuller's widow acquired a site on the south
side of Old Street and built the almshouses before 1605, adding a further
endowment before her death in 1623, though the almshouses were not incorporated
as her late husband had intended until 1680.
Fuller's Hospital, administered by Shoreditch Parish, was rebuilt in
1787 and moved to new buildings in Wood Green in 1865 when the site was taken
for the construction of a fire station and a town hall for Shoreditch Vestry.
Shoreditch parish ran three other
almshouses. Badger's Almshouses, at the
south-east end of Hoxton Street, were in a charitable huddle with three other
foundations - the Refuge for the Destitute to the rear, Weavers' Almshouses to
the south, and Walters' and Porter's Almshouses to the south east. Founded under the will of Allen Badger in
1674, the almshouses were built in 1698, accommodating six women until
demolition in 1873. Hackney Road
almshouses were converted from an engine and watch house built in 1825 in the
grounds of the additional churchyard laid out in 1625 on the north side of
Hackney Road. Appropriately it was
intended that two of the four old almsmen should have been former watchmen for
the parish. After the creation of a united
Shoreditch parish almshouse at Wood Green, the Hackney Road buildings were demolished
in 1904 and the site is now a playground.
The last parochial foundation, the Shoreditch New Almshouses, founded in
Kent Street, Haggerston in 1852 for twenty locals, lasted until just after the
Second World War.
The most impressive foundations were set up
under the auspices of the City Livery Companies. Aske's Hospital in Pitfield Street was established by the
Haberdashers' Company under the will of Robert Aske, dated 1689. Established by an Act of Parliament, the
charity acquired the Pitfield Street site, and invested the balance of the
bequest in lands in Kent. Robert Hooke
designed the first buildings, which were completed in 1695. The foundation housed twenty poor freemen of
the Company and a school for twenty sons of freemen. After the development of the grounds for housing, the original
buildings were demolished in 1822 and replaced by a range designed by David
Riddell Roper, completed in 1827.
Changes in the charity during 1873 led to the closure of the almshouses
and expansion of the school; Shoreditch Vestry then prevailed the London County
Council to house Shoreditch Technical Institute there from 1898.
Along the east side of Kingsland Road,
there were three foundations. South of
the present Geffrye Museum were Harwar's Almshouses, founded in 1704 and
managed by the Drapers' Company. The
Geffrye began as the Ironmongers' Company almshouses, built in 1712, with a
small central chapel, and to the north lay Bourne's Almshouses founded under the
auspices of the Framework Knitters' Company in 1734. The Drapers' Company administered Walters' and Porter's
Almshouses on the site of the present Old Street Magistrates Court. These had been founded in 1656 under the
terms of the wills of John Walter and his widow Alice. Originally catering for eight almspeople,
jointly appointed by the Company and Shoreditch parish, the almshouses were
extended through the gift of Thomas Porter in 1826 and the entire site
rebuilt. Adjoining and to the east were
the Weavers' Company almshouses built on land leased from the parish for 200
years in 1669. These seem to have gone
on the expiry of the lease. Last of the
Livery Company foundations was Richard Morrell's foundation, built in the
fields of Haggerston in 1705 for poor members of the Goldsmiths' Company on the
path which was to become Goldsmiths' Row.
Although in poor repair in 1863, the almshouses lasted until 1889, when
the combination of building costs and the poverty of the surrounding area led
the Company to sell the site for redevelopment and divert the charity into
pensions.
The parishes of St. Botolph's Aldgate and
St. Botolph Bishopsgate, were left funds by Elizabeth, Viscount Lumley for an
almshouse in 1657, but took fifteen years before admitting that they could not
find a site in either parish. In 1672
they used a site on the east side of Shepherdess Walk and the resulting
foundation, rebuilt in 1822, lasted until 1898. Other almshouses with religious associations included Berman's
Almshouses, founded by a Presbyterian minister for eight women in 1703. The original almshouses, east of Hoxton
Street, were replaced by buildings in Basing Square, off Kingsland Road, in
1813.
Another almshouse with Presbyterian
associations was founded by Mrs. Mary Westby and her sister in 1749. Westby's Almshouses, on the east side of
Pitfield Street, south of Bacchus Walk, lasted until 1881, when the site was
taken for a board school. They were
originally for Protestant or dissenting widows or spinsters, and were known
locally as "The Old Maids' Almshouses". Prior to 1865 there was an almshouse founded by the Dutch Church
in London, between Crown Street and Whitecross Alley. Built in 1688 for poor church members, the site was acquired by
the London and North Western Railway in 1865 and the foundation moved to
Charlton in Kent.
Some of the parochial donations included
land and houses in Shoreditch parish, others funded gifts of bread or money to
apprentice local children. Of the many
donations, two have lasted until modern times.
Thomas Fairchild, the Hoxton nurseryman, left money in his will of 1728
for the preaching of an annual sermon at Whitsun on either "The wonderful
works of God in Creation" or "On the certainty of the resurrection of
the dead, proved by certain changes of the animal and vegetable parts of
creation". Known locally as
"The Vegetable Sermon", Fairchild's bequest was observed until recent
years. John Dawson, an exciseman, left
a substantial library in his will of 1763.
The majority of these books survive, in the care of Hackney Archives Department, and Dawson's
library is one of the few remaining parochial libraries left in London.
The education of the poor was also left to
charitable foundations. The parish's
own charity school opened in 1705, funded by subscriptions from each of the
liberties, catering for fifty boys chosen from the different areas of
Shoreditch in proportion to the funds each contributed. Beginning in a room in Pitfield Street, the
school later moved to a house at the south east end of Kingsland Road. A girls' school was opened in 1709. Donations funded clothing for the pupils,
which often ended up being worn by their parents. There were no great aspirations to high academic standards - the
goal was apprenticeships for the boys and domestic service for the girls. In 1799 widening of the Kingsland Road
provided the opportunity and some help with the funding to build a new school
on the same site. The foundation of
other schools in Shoreditch in the 1830s gradually diminished the importance of
the charity school, though it did not close until 1889. The school building of 1799 survives as a
betting shop.
Orphans had a even tougher time than the
parish poor. In 1758 a group of
nonconformists established the Orphan Working School in a small house in Hoxton
Street, initially taking in twenty boys, but later admitting twenty girls;
again with the objective of apprenticing the boys and training the girls to be
domestic servants. They would appear to
have taken over a complete house (part of which survived to become 46-8 Hoxton
Street) but the age of the Hoxton property led to the school moving to new
premises on the south side of City Road in 1775. It was to remain there until 1847, when the end of the lease
enabled the governors to move their 240 charges to Haverstock Hill. In 1988 the school was at Reigate, called
the Royal Alexandra and Albert School.
Shoreditch's own poor were catered for in
the parish workhouse from 1726, when one was built on the west side of Hoxton
Street, between Ivy Street (originally Workhouse Lane) and the later Hemsworth
Street. Among the bequests the parish
received was a gift of an estate on the opposite side of Hoxton Street, called
the Land of Promise. When a lease came
up for renewal in 1776 the eastern half, including the Kingsland Road frontage
were passed over to the newly-created Trustees of the Poor to build a new
workhouse, completed in the following year.
Workhouses also catered for sick as well as healthy paupers, and after a
succession of parish doctors of varying ability, the parish was lucky to secure
the services of James Parkinson and his son in 1813. The Parkinsons initiated improvements in the care of the sick,
including the separation of surgical from medical sick, the establishment of a
maternity ward and the isolation of fever cases. The last reform was given impetus by the typhus outbreak of 1815
which spread through the courts and alleys of Hoxton, and Parkinson's fever
block was the first of its kind in London.
In a later outbreak, only five people died, such was the success of the
new policy. Parkinson had produced a
pamphlet on parochial fever wards, but it is for his Essay of the Shaking Palsy, which appeared in 1817 that he is
remembered today, through the illness that now bears his name, Parkinson's
Disease.