Emmanuel Hospital Westminster

Illustrations

Herbert Railton

It stood at first in Sir Thomas More's chapel, but was afterwards removed to its present position in the south aisle.

Six years elapsed after Lady Dacre's death, while lawyers and others took their toll of her bequest, before her wishes were completely carried out. The parishes to be benefited were those of Westminster, Chelsea, Hayes in Middlesex, and Brandesburton near Beverley in Yorkshire. The whole manor of Brandesburton was bequeathed, for the purposes of the trust, to the executors. In 1601 a charter was obtained from Queen Elizabeth, and the house in Tothill Fields was constituted a hospital for the poor under the name of Emmanuel Hospital. A kind of school formed part of theoriginal scheme, under which, apparently, each poor man and each poor woman who could do it under-took the charge of an orphan child. Such inmates were to instruct the child "in virtue and in good and laudable acts." Lady Dacre probably did not contemplate reading, writing, and arithmetic as of much use in the class for which her charities were designed. A school was, nevertheless, eventually established in 1735.

This arrangement was of course quite contrary to the reforming tendencies of this enlightened age, Lady Dacre's school was the first upon which the newly-appointed Endowed Schools Commission pounced, and when' we heard of it last sixty-three children were being fed, clothed, and taught ~ but whether in "virtue or  in good and laudable acts" who can say?

The Hospital remained in Tothill Fields, The site was part of a little estate which had belonged to Lord and Lady Dacre, who, before the inheritance of Chelsea, had lived close by, at Stourton House, the site of which, with its surrounding "compound," is still marked by Stourton (corrupted into Strutton) Ground. In 1794, a hundred years ago, leases at Brandesburton and other places fell in, and the charity was greatly extended. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London had become the governors. Those who admired the old buildings used to think that with such guardians they were safe. But no; the house agent element in the present Corporation rendered it no more trustworthy than a committee of the Endowed Schools Commission, and Emmanuel Hospital, in spite of vehement efforts to save it, is a thing of the past.