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notes, fragmentary as they are, would be more so if I omitted to mention
a few minor matters which were conceived and carried out in a similar
spirit to the larger ones, and which unitedly involved as much cost
and care as either of the groups of institutions referred to. I have
publicly opened several libraries which I did not build-namely, the
public libraries at Canning Town, Stoke Newington, Barking, Bromley-by-Bow,
Tottenham, Walthamstow, the Central Library and Technical Institute
at West Ham, Ramsgate, and the library of the Borough Road Polytechnic.
In every instance when I have declared a public library opened I have
presented it with a thousand or more volumes. I have equipped a boys'
reading room at the Cripplegate Institution, and a technical library
for the printing and allied trades at St. Bride's Institution. I have
also during the last twenty years presented upwards of 80,000 volumes
to libraries, reading-rooms, workmen's clubs, schools, hospitals,
etc.-varying in number from a hundred volumes to a club to five thousand
volumes to the Ocean Library, under the control of the British and
Foreign Sailors' Society, Commercial Road, Limehouse. I have added
an English Literature Scholarship to the Oxford University; an endowment
for free lectures to London public libraries; an endowment for historical
teaching at University Hall, Clare Market; a Perpetual Pension for
the Printers' Pension Society; a similar pension for the Actors' Benevolent
Society; a similar pension for the Oddfellows' fraternity; a public
garden for Woolwich,' and a life-boat for Broughty Ferry, near Dundee. |
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