THE PEABODY TRUST FUND

Inangahua Times, Volume II, Issue II, 17 August 1881, Page 2

THE PEABODY TRUST FUND

o The Peabody trust for the poor of London (remarks the San Francisco Bulletin) appears to be administered with great, judgment. In 1862, seven years before his death, Mr Peabody gave £500,0C0 sterliog (2,500,000) in trust to be used in the erection of good and comfortable buildings to be let at low rents to the hon?st and industrious poor of London. The sixteenth meeting of the trustees has just been published. The statistics tliere*n given are very interesting. The conditions of good artistic construction were to be put up and subdivided into compartments, of which one or more room 9 were to be rented at lower rates than were charged jsby the proprietors of tbe dreary lodging-houses in which so nuny of the poor of that great city are crowded. The rents derived from the letting of those rooms were to be again invested from time to time in new buildings of a similar character and rented to a similar class of people. Up to tbe present time the trustees have expended £2 750,000 in the erection of eleven blocks of buildings, situate in different parts of London. T hese buildings contain 5170 rooms ex* elusive of bathrooms, laundries, and washhouses. They constitute 2355 separate dwellings, inhabited by 9899 persons, and the net receipts last year in rents anc interest were £126,380. From the func that has been accumulating for severs years past the trustees have other buildings now in progress, which it is expectec will be finished by the end of the present year, and which will afford additional ac commodation for 3600 persons; thus giving for the whole of the Peabodj buddings a total population of 13,000, When these additional buildings are oc* oupied tbe fund derived from rents will be correspondingly increased, and as, by the terms of the gift, it is to be used in building otber blocks of lodging houses, it it is obvious that if the trust continues to be administered as well as it has been up to the present time, a considerable portion of the poor of London will ultimately be lodged under conditions most favourable to health. The death rate of the Peabody buildings for the past year was 249 be* low the average rate for the whole of London, and very much below the average rate of the ordinary class of tenement houses. The eager demand for rooms in the Peabody buildings enables tbe trustees to pick their lodgers and to exact conformity to tbe rules and regulations laid down for observance.