The Ironmongers’ charities are not so extensive as many of the other City Guilds’, but they represent a variety of really good and seasonable benefactions. Among these are two almshouse foundations (Geffery and Lewen), scholarships to schools and exhibitions to universities, a small free school in Cornwall, the poor of the City wards, loans to poor young freemen to help them on in life, bequests to hospitals, to poor maids upon their marriage, to poor prisoners in debt, to the poor freemen and their widows, to poor ministers and clergy, to the national schools of the kingdom, &c. The charity trusts amount to about 12,000_l._ a year, half of which, being from rents, have of late years fluctuated. The Company does not possess any ecclesiastical patronage, except the appointment of a chaplain, who is also the minister to the almshouse poor. There was a priest of the company 400 years ago, but the present chaplain, the Rev. H. M. Baker, is the fourteenth since 1715, when the first appointment to the almshouses in the Kingsland Road was made. Through the changes of the times and the “compulsory” sales by Act of Parliament for modern improvements, some of the old property has changed hands and new property has been purchased. This has been specially the case under the Geffery and Betton trusts, and round about East and West Ham and the Isle of Dogs. The Company now possesses houses and premises in Old Street, St. Luke’s (Mitchell), Basinghall Street, Philpot Lane, and Fleet Street. It also possesses the site of the famous New Park Street Chapel, Southwark, where the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon first preached when he came to London; also, farms in the counties of Bucks, Essex, and Surrey. When in the good old times—so says a newspaper in July, 1769—the Company went on tour to view their Essex estate, they “held their annual feast at the Devil’s House” (now Duval’s House), near East Ham, a house of entertainment at that date. The sign of the house is suggestive to the disciples of St. Dunstan. In recent years two great districts have grown up in and around East and West Ham—Beckton, which takes its name from the worthy clerk of the Company (S. Adams Beck), who died in 1883, and Silvertown, from a recent Master of the Ironmongers’ Company (S. W. Silver), who has proved most energetic in promoting the Company’s welfare. One word more about the old estates. The great fire of London of 1666 burnt down nearly all the City property of the Companies, and the loss to the Ironmongers was serious. Fortunately, the Hall was saved.