Bolton Sarah Knowles
Famous Givers and Their Gifts
Courses of free lectures are given at Pratt Institute to the public as well as the students; a summer school is provided at Glen Cove, Long Island, for such as wish to learn about agriculture, with instruction given in botany, chemistry, physiology, raising and harvesting crops, and the care of animals; nurses are trained in the care and development of children; a bright monthly magazine is published by the Institute; a Neighborship Association has been formed of alumni, teachers, and pupils, which meets for the discussion of such topics as "The relation of the rich to the poor," "The ethics of giving," "Citizenship," etc., and to carry out the work and spirit of the Institute wherever opportunity offers.
Already the influence of Pratt Institute has been very great. Public schools all over the country are adopting some form of manual training whereby the pupils shall be better fitted to earn their living. Mr. Chas. M. Pratt, in one of his Founder's Day addresses, quotes the words of a successful teacher and merchant: "There is nothing under God's heaven so important to the individual as to acquire the power to earn his own living; to be able to stand alone if necessary; to be dependent upon no one; to be indispensable to some one."
About four thousand students receive instruction each year at the Institute. Many go out as teachers to other schools all over the country. As the founder said in his last address, "The world goes on, and Pratt Institute, if it fulfils the hopes and expectations of its founder, must go on, and as the years pass, the field of its influence should grow wider and wider."
On the day that he died, Mr. Herbert S. Adams, the sculptor, had finished a bust of Mr. Pratt in clay. It was put into bronze by the teachers and pupils, and now stands in the Institute, with these words of the founder cut in the bronze: "The giving which counts is the giving of one's self."
THOMAS GUY
AND HIS HOSPITAL
One day the rich Matthew Vassar stood before the great London hospital founded by Thomas Guy, and read these words on the pedestal of the bronze statue: —
THOMAS GUY,
SOLE FOUNDER OF THIS HOSPITAL IN HIS LIFETIME
A.D. MDCCXXI
The last three words made a deep impression. Matthew Vassar had no children. He wished to leave his fortune where it would be of permanent value; and lest something might happen to thwart his plan, he had to do it in his lifetime.
Sir Isaac Newton said, "They who give nothing till they die, never give at all." Several years before his death, Matthew Vassar built Vassar College near Poughkeepsie, N.Y.; for he said, "There is not in our country, there is not in the world so far as known, a single fully endowed institution for the education of women. It is my hope to be the instrument, in the hands of Providence, of founding and perpetuating an institution which shall accomplish for young women what our colleges are accomplishing for young men."
To this end he gave a million dollars, and was happy in the results. His birthday is celebrated each year as "Founder's Day." On one of these occasions he said, "This is almost more happiness than I can bear. This one day more than repays me for all I have done."
And what of Thomas Guy, whose example led to Matthew Vassar's noble gift while the latter was alive? He was an economical, self-made bookbinder and bookseller, who became the "greatest philanthropist of his day."
Thomas Guy was born in Horselydown, Southwark, in the outskirts of London, in 1644 or 1645. His father, Thomas Guy, was a lighterman and coalmonger, one who transferred coal from the colliers to the wharves, and also sold it to customers. He was a member of the Carpenters' Company of the city of London, and probably owned some barges.
His wife, Anne Vaughton, belonged to a family of better social position than her husband, as several of her relatives had been mayors in Tamworth, or held other offices of influence.
When the boy Thomas was eight years old, his father died, leaving Mrs. Guy to bring up three small children, Thomas, John, and Anne. The eldest probably went to the free grammar school of Tamworth, and when fifteen or sixteen years of age was apprenticed for eight years to John Clarke the younger, bookseller and bookbinder in Cheapside, London.
John Clarke was ruined in the great fire of Sept. 2, 1666, which, says H. R. Fox Bourne in his "London Merchants," "destroyed eighty-nine churches, and more than thirteen thousand houses in four hundred streets. Of the whole district within the city walls, four hundred and thirty-six acres were in ruins, and only seventy-five acres were left covered. Property worth £10,000,000 was wasted, and thousands of starving Londoners had to run for their lives, and crouch for days and weeks on the bare fields of Islington and Hampstead, Southwark and Lambeth."
What Thomas Guy was in his later life he probably was as a boy, – hard-working, economical, of good habits, and determined to succeed. When the eight years of apprenticeship were over he was admitted a freeman of the Stationers' Company; and having a little means, he began a business at the junction of Cornhill and Lombard Streets, where he resided through his whole life. His stock of books at the beginning was worth about two hundred pounds.
At this time many English Bibles were printed in Holland on account of the better paper and types found there, and vast numbers were imported to England with large profits. Young Guy, with business shrewdness, soon became an importer of Bibles, and very probably Prayer-books and Psalms.
The King's printers were opposed to such importations, and caused the arrest of booksellers and publishers, so that this Holland trade was largely broken up. It is said that the King's printers so raised the price of Bibles that the poor were unable to buy them. The privilege of printing was limited to London, York, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Then London and Oxford quarrelled over Bible printing, and each tried to undersell the other.
Thomas Guy and Peter Parker printed Bibles for Oxford, had four presses in use within four months of their undertaking the Oxford work, and showed the greatest activity, skill, and energy in the enterprise. Their work was excellent, and some of their Bibles and other volumes are still found in the English libraries.
These University printers, Parker & Guy, had many lawsuits with other firms, who claimed that the former had made £10,000, or even £15,000, by their connection with Oxford. Doubtless they had made money; but they had done their work well, and deserved their success.
Concerning Oxford Bibles, a writer in McClure's Magazine says, "In these days the privilege of printing a Bible is hardly less jealously guarded in the United Kingdom than the privilege of printing a banknote. It is accorded by license to the Queen's printers, and by charter to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge; and it is, as a matter of fact, at the University of Oxford that the greatest bulk of the work is done. From this famous press there issue annually about one million copies of the sacred book; copies ranging in price from tenpence to ten pounds, and in form from the brilliant Bible, which weighs in its most handsome binding less than four ounces, and measures 3½ by 2-1/8 by ¾ inches, to the superb folio Bible for church use, the page of which measures 19 by 12 inches, which is the only folio Bible in existence – seventy-eight editions in all; copies in all manner of languages, even the most barbarous."
The choicest paper is used, and the utmost care taken with setting the type. It is computed that to set up and "read" a reference Bible costs £1,000.
"The first step is to make a careful calculation, showing what, in the particular type employed, will be the exact contents of each page, from the first page to the last. It must be known before a single type is set just what will be the first and last word on each page. It is not enough that this calculation shall be approximate, it must be exact to the syllable.
"The proofs are then read again by a fresh reader, from a fresh model; and this process is repeated until, before being electrotyped, they have been read five times in all. Any compositor who detects an error in the model gets a reward; but only two such rewards have ever been earned. Any member of the public who is first to detect an error in the authorized text is entitled to one guinea, but the average annual outlay of the press under this head is almost nil."
As soon as Thomas Guy prospered, he gave to various causes. He gave five pounds to help rebuild the schoolhouse at Tamworth, where he had been a student a few years before; and when a little over thirty years of age, in 1678, he bought some land in Tamworth, and erected an almshouse for seven poor women. A good-sized room was used for their library. The whole cost was £200, a worthy beginning for a young man.
A little later Mr. Guy gave ten pounds yearly to a "Spinning School," where the children of the poor were taught how to work, probably some kind of industrial training. Also ten pounds yearly to a Dissenting minister, and the same amount to one of the Established Church.
When Mr. Guy was a little over forty, he gave another £200 for almshouses for poor men at Tamworth; and the town called him, "Our incomparable benefactor."
When Mr. Guy was forty-five years of age, in 1690, he attempted to enter Parliament from Tamworth, but was defeated. This was the second Parliament under William and Mary. In 1694 he was elected sheriff of London, but refused to serve, perhaps on account of the expense, as he disliked display, and paid the penalty of refusing, £400.
In the third Parliament, 1695, Mr. Guy tried again, and succeeded. He was re-elected after an exciting contest in 1698, and again in 1701 and 1702, and in two Parliaments under Queen Anne.
While in Parliament he built a town hall for the people of Tamworth. In 1708, after thirteen years of service, Mr. Guy was rejected. It is said that he promised the people of Tamworth, so much did he enjoy Parliamentary life, that if they would elect him again he would leave his whole fortune to the town, so they should never have a pauper; but for once they forgot their "incomparable benefactor," and Thomas Guy in turn forgot them.
"The cause of Guy's rejection," says the history of Tamworth, "is said to have been his neglect of the gastronomic propensities of his worthy, patriotic, and enlightened constituents, by whom the virtues of fasting appear to have been entirely forgotten. In the anger of the moment he threatened to pull down the town hall which he had built, and to abolish the almshouses. The burgesses, repenting of their rash act, sent a deputation to wait upon him with the offer of re-election in the ensuing Parliament, 1810; but he rejected all conciliation. He always considered that he had been treated with great ingratitude, and he deprived the inhabitants of Tamworth of the advantage of his almshouses." His will provided that persons from certain towns might find a home in his almshouses, his own relatives to be preferred, should any offer themselves; but Tamworth was left out of the list of towns.
Mr. Guy already had become very wealthy. During the wars of William and Anne with Louis XIV., the soldiers and seamen were sometimes unpaid for years, from lack of funds. Tickets were given them, and they were willing to sell these at whatever price they would bring. Mr. Guy bought largely from the seamen, and has been blamed for so doing; but his latest biographers, Messrs. Wilks and Bettany, in their interesting and valuable "Biographical History of Guy's Hospital," think he did it with a spirit of kindness rather than of avarice. "It is at least consistent with his general philanthropy to suppose that, compassionating the poor seamen who could not get their money, he offered them more than they could get elsewhere, and that this accounts for his being so large a purchaser of seamen's tickets. Instead of being to his discredit, we think rather that it is to his credit, and that he managed to benefit a large number of necessitous men, while at the same time, in the future, benefiting himself."
Mr. Guy also made a great amount of money in the South Sea Company. With regard to the South Sea stock, says the Saturday Magazine, "Mr. Guy had no hand in framing or conducting that scandalous fraud; he obtained the stock when low, and had the good sense to sell it at the time it was at its height."
Chambers's "Book of Days" gives a very interesting account of this "South Sea Bubble." Harley, Earl of Oxford, who had helped Queen Anne to get rid of her advisers, the Duke of Marlborough and the proud Duchess, Sarah, with a desire to "restore public credit, and discharge ten millions of the floating debt, agreed with a company of merchants that they should take the debt upon themselves for a certain time, at the interest of six per cent, to provide for which, amounting to £600,000 per annum, the duties for certain articles were rendered permanent. At the same time was granted the monopoly of trade to the South Seas, and the merchants were incorporated as the South Sea Company; and so proud was the minister of his scheme that it was called by his flatterers, 'The Earl of Oxford's Masterpiece.'"
The South Sea Company, after a time, agreed to take upon themselves the whole of the national debt, £30,981,712, about $150,000,000. Sir John Blount, a speculator, first propounded the scheme. It was rumored that Spain, by treaty with England, would grant free trade to all her colonies, and that silver would thus be brought from Potosi, and become as plentiful as iron; and that Mexico would part with gold in abundance for English cotton and woollen goods. It was also said that Spain, in exchange for Gibraltar and Port Mahon, would give up places on the coast of Peru. It was promised that each person who took £100 of stock would make fifty per cent, and probably much more. Mr. Guy took £45,500 of stock, probably the amount which the government owed him for seamen's tickets. Others who had claims "were empowered to subscribe the several sums due to them … for which he and the rest of the subscribers were to receive an annual interest of six per cent upon their respective subscriptions, until the same were discharged by Parliament."
The speculating mania spread widely. Great ladies pawned their jewels in order to invest. Lords were eager to double and treble their money. A journalist of the time writes: "The South Sea equipages increase daily; the city ladies buy South Sea jewels, hire South Sea maids, take new country South Sea houses; the gentlemen set up South Sea coaches, and buy South Sea estates."
The people seemed wild with speculation. All sorts of companies were established; one with ten million dollars capital to import walnut-trees from Virginia; one with five million dollars capital for a "wheel for perpetual motion." An unknown adventurer started "a company for carrying on an undertaking of great advantage, but nobody to know what it is." Next morning this great man opened an office in Cornhill, and before three o'clock one thousand shares had been subscribed for at ten dollars a share, and the deposits paid. He put the ten thousand dollars in his pocket, set off the same evening for the Continent, and was never heard of again. He had assured them that nobody would know what the undertaking was, and he had kept his word.
The South Sea stock rose in one day from 130 per cent to 300, and finally to 1,000 per cent. It then became known that Sir John Blount, the chairman, and some others had sold out, making vast fortunes. The price of stock began to fall, and at last the crisis brought ruin to thousands. The poet Gay, who had been given £20,000 of stock, and had thought himself rich, lost all, and was so ill in consequence that his life was in danger. Some men committed suicide on account of their losses, and some became insane. Prior said, "I am lost in the South Sea. The roaring of the waves and the madness of the people are justly put together." The people were now as wild with anger as they had been intoxicated with hope for gain. They demanded redress, and the punishment of the directors of the South Sea Company. Men high in position were thrown into the Tower after it was found that the books of the company had been tampered with or destroyed, and large amounts of stock used to bribe men in office. The directors were fined over ten million dollars, and their fortunes distributed among the sufferers. Sir John Blount was allowed but £5,000 out of a fortune of £183,000. The fortune of another, a million and a half pounds, was given to the losers. One man was treated with especial severity because he was reported to have said that "he would feed his carriage horses off gold."
Mr. Guy, fearing that there was trickery when the stock rose so rapidly, sold out when the prices were from three to six hundred, and thereby saved himself from financial ruin. He was now very rich, having always lived economically. When he was a bookseller it is said that he always ate his dinner on his counter, using a newspaper for a tablecloth.
The following story is told by Walter Thornbury in his "Old and New London: " —
"'Vulture' Hopkins, so called from his alleged desire to seize upon gains, and who had become rich in South Sea stock, once called upon Mr. Guy to learn a lesson, as he said, in the art of saving. Being introduced into the parlor, Guy, not knowing his visitor, lighted a candle; but when Hopkins said, 'Sir, I always thought myself perfect in the art of getting and husbanding money, but being informed that you far exceed me, I have taken the liberty of waiting upon you to be satisfied on this subject.' Guy replied, 'If that is all your business, we can as well talk it over in the dark,' and immediately put out the candle. This was evidence sufficient for Hopkins, who acknowledged Guy to be his master, and took his leave."
Notwithstanding Mr. Guy's penuriousness, he had the grace of gratitude. Thousands forget their helpers after prosperity comes to them. Not so Thomas Guy. The Saturday Magazine for Aug. 2, 1834, relates this incident: "The munificent founder of Guy's Hospital was a man of very humble appearance, and of a melancholy cast of countenance. One day, while pensively leaning over one of the bridges, he attracted the attention and commiseration of a bystander, who, apprehensive that he meditated self-destruction, could not refrain from addressing him with an earnest entreaty not to let his misfortunes tempt him to commit any rash act; then, placing in his hand a guinea, with the delicacy of genuine benevolence he hastily withdrew.
"Guy, roused from his revery, followed the stranger, and warmly expressed his gratitude, but assured him that he was mistaken in supposing him to be either in distress of mind or of circumstances, making an earnest request to be favored with the name of the good man, his intended benefactor. The address was given, and they parted. Some years later Guy, observing the name of his friend in the bankrupt list, hastened to his house, brought to his recollection their former interview; found upon investigation that no blame could be attached to him under his misfortunes; intimated his ability and also his intention to serve him; entered into immediate arrangements with his creditors; and finally re-established him in a business which ever after prospered in his hands, and in the hands of his children's children, for many years in Newgate Street."
Those who knew Mr. Guy best declared that "his chief design in getting money seems to have been with a view of employing the same in good works." He gave five guineas to Mr. Bowyer, a printer, who had lost everything by fire, "not knowing," said Mr. Guy, "how soon it may be our own case." He also gave in 1717 to the Stationer's Company £1,000, to be distributed to poor members and widows at the rate of £50 per annum.
"Many of his poor though distant relations had stated allowances from him of £10 or £20 a year, and occasionally larger sums; and to two of them he gave £500 apiece to advance them in the world. He has several times given £50 for discharging insolvent debtors. He has readily given £100 at a time on application to him on behalf of a distressed family."
In 1704 Mr. Guy was asked to become the governor of St. Thomas's Hospital, partly because he was a prominent and able citizen, and partly because he might thus become interested and give some money. Mr. Guy accepted the office, and soon built three new wards at a cost of £1,000, and provided the hospital with £100 a year for the benefit of its poor. When patients left the hospital they were often unfit for work, and this money would provide food for them for a time. He had given already to the steward money and clothes for such cases of need. He also built, in 1724, a new entrance to St. Thomas's Hospital, improved the front, and erected two large brick houses, these works costing him £3,000.
Mr. Guy seems to have given constantly from his youth, and always with good sense in his gifts. He was growing old. He probably had meditated long and carefully as to what use he should put his wealth. Highmore, in his "History of the Public Charities of London," tells this rather improbable story: "For the application of this fortune to charitable uses the public are indebted to a trifling circumstance. He employed a female servant whom he had agreed to marry. Some days previous to the intended ceremony he had ordered the pavement before his door to be mended up to a particular stone which he had marked, and then left his house on business.
"The servant, in his absence, looking at the workmen, saw a broken stone beyond this mark which they had not repaired; and on pointing to it with that design, they acquainted her that Mr. Guy had not ordered them to go so far. She, however, directed it to be done, adding, with the security incidental to her expectation of soon becoming his wife, 'Tell him I bade you, and he will not be angry.' But she soon learnt how fatal it is for one in a dependent position to exceed the limits of his or her authority; for her master, on his return, was angered that they had gone beyond his orders, renounced his engagement to his servant, and devoted his ample fortune to public charity."
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.
About six years after the death of the founder, a bronze statue of him by Scheymaker was erected in the open square in front of the hospital, costing five hundred guineas. On the pedestal are representations of the Good Samaritan, Christ healing the sick, and Mr. Guy's armorial bearings. In the chapel a marble statue of Mr. Guy, costing £1,000, was erected by Mr. Bacon in 1779. The founder is represented as holding out one hand to raise a poor invalid lying on the earth, and pointing with the other hand to a person carried on a litter into one of the hospital wards. On the pedestal is an inscription beginning with these words, —
UNDERNEATH ARE DEPOSITED THE REMAINS OF
THOMAS GUY,
CITIZEN OF LONDON, MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT, AND THE SOLE
FOUNDER OF THIS HOSPITAL IN HIS LIFETIME
In 1788 the noble John Howard visited Guy's Hospital; and while he found some of the wards too low, being only nine feet and a half high, in the new wards he praised the iron bedsteads and hair beds as being clean and wholesome.
For over one hundred and seventy years Guy's Hospital has done its noble work. Departments have been added for special treatment of the eye, the ear, the teeth, the throat, etc., while thousands of mothers are cared for at their homes at the birth of their children.
In 1829, at his death, another governor of Guy's Hospital, Mr. William Hunt, left £180,000 to the hospital. He was buried in the vault under the chapel by the side of Thomas Guy. After some years, Hunt's House, a large central block, with north and south wings of brick with stone facings, was erected, the whole costing nearly £70,000. From time to time other needed buildings have been added, such as laboratories, museums, etc. There are now in the hospital over seven hundred beds. Only a few beds are reserved for those who can afford to pay; with this exception patients are admitted to all parts of the hospital free of charge. "The Royal Guide to London Charities," compiled by Herbert Fry, says, "No recommendation is needed for admission to this hospital. Sickness allied to poverty is an all-sufficient qualification." A fund has been established for relieving the families of deserving and poor patients while they are in the hospital. This is not only a blessing to the dependent ones, but prevents the anxiety and worry of the suffering inmates.
