With the exception of a number of smaller charities for apprenticing boys, relieving poor widows, giving doles of bread, no important public benefactions were bestowed for nearly a century. Almshouses in imitation of Lench’s Trust, twenty in number, were built by Joseph Dowell, in Warner Street, in 1820, and another set by Mrs. Glover, in Steelhouse Lane, for thirty-six aged women, in 1832. The last twenty years have been fruitful in gifts by our wealthier citizens beginning with-- =Evans’ Cottage Homes=, Founded in 1867, by Alfred Smith Evans (of the then well-known firm of Evans and Askin), are six cottages at Selly Oak, of a superior kind to the ordinary almshouse, for ladies of reduced means. Each inmate is required to possess an income of £25 a year, and receives £20 a year from the trust. Vacancies in the trustees are supplied by magistrates of the borough, appointed by the Town Council. =The Orphanage= and =Almshouses= at Erdington, completed in 1868, at a cost of £60,000, by the late Sir Josiah (then Josiah) Mason, and endowed with an annual income from landed property, which in 1885 produced £6,400. The Orphanage contains upwards of 300 children, in the proportion of two girls to one boy. The Almshouses contain 30 poor women. Seven of the fourteen trustees are appointed by the Town Council. =Crowley’s Orphanage.=--Thomas Crowley, a timber merchant, of Birmingham, who died 28th February, 1869, by deed dated 15th February, 1869, settled £10,000 upon trusts to educate poor orphan girls. No orphanage has yet been built, but temporary homes have been opened in Ladywood Road. =The James’ Trust.=--The Misses Elizabeth and Emma James, by deed dated 1st November, 1869, conveyed a freehold estate in Paradise Street, as an endowment for “The James’ Almhouses” they had built at Nechells for aged women, to provide five annuities of £20 each for poor and decayed gentlewomen, and a scholarship of £50 a year from the Free Grammar School at Birmingham to the Universities of Oxford or Cambridge. The net income is about £750 per annum, the surplus beyond £450 per annum is to be accumulated, and applied in building additional almshouses. =The Public Picture Gallery Fund= originated in a gift in the year 1871, by Mr. T. Clarkson Osler (of the well-known firm of glass manufacturers) of a sum of £3,000 for the purchase of pictures for the Corporation Art Gallery. This sum is augmented by other donations and amounts subscribed, and has been the means of adorning the Art Gallery with many valuable pictures. =Dudley Trust.=--Mr. William Dudley, a Jeweller of Birmingham, by deed dated 8th May, 1875, settled £100,000 in the hands of Trustees to be used in (1) Loans to young tradesmen at low rates of interest; (2) Annuities to aged tradesmen, and (3) Surplus to be applied in aid of the charitable institutions of the Borough. Four of the Trustees are to be appointed by the Town Council.