QUAINT CHARITIES

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 14, 14 December 1932, Page 11

QUAINT CHARITIES

BREAD FLUNG FROM A STEEPLE. Though people are naturally averse to having charity “thrown at their heads,” the poorer folk of Paddington, in London, have their Christmas bread and cheese flung down at them from the eminence of tbo church steeple. “On Sunday, after Divine service,” says the Grub Street Journal, of December 21, 1736, “was performed tlie annual ceremony of throwing bread and cheese out of Paddington Church steeple among the spectators, and giving them ale. Tlie custom was established by two women, who purchased five acres of land to the above use in commemoration of the particular charity, whereby they had been relieved when in extreme necessity.” As whimsical a charity was that founded by one Henry Greene, an odd character of the early eighteenth century, who left a sum of money, the interest of which was to be spent annually in providing “four poor women with lour green waistcoats, to be laced with green galloon lace, and to be delivered to the women on or before December 20, so that they may be worn on Christmas Day.”

William Robinson, one-time sheriff of Hull, contrived to have bis memory kept green at a much smaller cost than many men would pay for even a limited immortality. By liis will lie directed that every Cliristmas Day 12 loaves of bread should be given to as many poor widows; but in order to qualify for the loaves the widows must present themselves by the testator’s graveside and receive their Cliristmas doles' over the bones of their benefactor.

A curious bequest was that of Mr Charles James Card, a naval officer who died a few years ago, leaving a sum of £SOO to be invested in Consols, and its income distributed every Christmas' by means of slips which were to bear the initials of the benefactor, C.J.C. Twelve slips were to divide the income.

In a dictionary of the year 1585 we find Christmas box defined as “a mony box made of potter’s clay wherein boyes put their mony to keepe, such as they hang in shoppes on toward Christmas.”