He was thus employed for five years; and on his return to England he published the results of his observations. The consequence was that many of the workhouses were reformed and improved. In 1761 he obtained an Act obliging every London parish to keep an annual register of all the infants received, discharged, and dead; and he took care that the Act should work, for he himself superintended its working with indefatigable watchfulness. He went about from workhouse to workhouse in the morning, and from one member of parliament to another in the afternoon, for day after day, and for year after year, enduring every rebuff, answering every objection, and accommodating himself to every humour. At length, after a perseverance hardly to be equalled, and after nearly ten years’ labour, he obtained another Act, at his sole expense (7 Geo. III. c. 39), directing that all parish infants belonging to the parishes within the bills of mortality should not be nursed in the workhouses, but be sent to nurse a certain number of miles out of town, until they were six years old, under the care of guardians to be elected triennially. The poor people called this “the Act for keeping children alive;” and the registers for the years which followed its passing, as compared with those which preceded it, showed that thousands of lives had been preserved through the judicious interference of this good and sensible man. Wherever a philanthropic work was to be done in London, be sure that Jonas Hanway’s hand was in it. One of the first Acts for the protection of chimney-sweepers’ boys was obtained through his influence. A destructive fire at Montreal, and another at Bridgetown, Barbadoes, afforded him the opportunity for raising a timely subscription for the relief of the sufferers. His name appeared in every list, and his disinterestedness and sincerity were universally recognized. But he was not suffered to waste his little fortune entirely in the service of others. Five leading citizens of London, headed by Mr. Hoare, the banker, without Mr. Hanway’s knowledge, waited on Lord Bute, then prime minister, in a body, and in the names of their fellow-citizens requested that some notice might be taken of this good man’s disinterested services to his country. The result was, his appointment shortly after, as one of the commissioners for victualling the navy.