The older charities of Plymouth / by R.N. Worth.

  • Richard Nicholls Worth
Date:
[1885]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The older charities of Plymouth / by R.N. Worth. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Hospital of Poor’s Portion developed. So early at any rate as 1597, we find the Corporation moving in this direction. There is extant a copy of a petition by one William Wonlfe, serge weaver, to the king, dated 1606, in which he complains that the Mayor and Aldermen of Plymouth had induced him nine years previously to come to that town from Exeter, for the purpose of instructing twenty poor children in the art of spinning worsted. His statement was that he was promised £50 for the first year, and £100 for the next, “which some of a hundred pounds they then also promised to lend unto him for seven yeares then after the effecting the premises, and likewise promised him they would from tyme to tyme duringe the said terme at their costes and charges after the first yeare mayntayne the said 20 poore children with meat drinke and apparell; and likewise that he should have out of every shipp that belonged to the same which came from the Newfoundland 100 of fishe, and a house rent free.” The rejoinder of the Mayor and Aldermen was that Woulfe was a wasteful and untruthful person, and his charges “ most false.” Mr. Foynes had agreed to lend him £30 and no more [Foynes or Fownes was Mayor when the agreement was made], and the town to provide the children with apparel, and to give him Is. a week for the diet of every child “ whom he should sett at work and instruct in his science.” Woulfe had wasted his £30 and was no longer able to put the children to work for want of credit. In 1611 we find entries of children being placed with William Weeks to be trained in a similar way. And then we are carried a step further, by a curious memorandum in one of the old Corporate Apprenticeship Books, apparently in the handwriting of Matthew Boyes, the town clerk, which records what appears to have been the first attempt to establish a workhouse, in the old castle. In the name of god, the 28th of {September an° 1610. A note of provLsions delivred into ye Castle for the pore to thende they maye be there placed and sett on work wch is but abeginninge for a fewe and for a tryall thereof the wch I praie god continewe and augment to his glorye & theire comfort Imprimis 2 bedsteads 2 new Large Canvas sheets 2 paire of newe blankits 2 Canvas boulsters 2 whyte rougs 5 turnes 2 paire of wollen cards 5 spilles and 5 wharvars (?) strings.