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229
magazine rooms, lending department, and apartments for
the Library Assistants.
Dulwich
Library,
Gift of Land.
We stated in our last Report that we had
made application to the Estates Governors of
Dulwich College for a free gift of land belonging to the
College for the erection of a Library, and that they had
kindly consented to make a grant, subject to the approval
of the Charity Commissioners, of a piece of land at the
corner of Woodwarde Road and Lordship Lane, having an
area of about half an acre.
The Governors submitted the same to the Charity
Commissioners for their sanction, but they replied that property
forming the Endowment of a Charity differed from
that of private individuals inasmuch as it could not be dealt
with at pleasure, but was subject in perpetuity for certain
specified objects.
The legislature had made provisions to meet the difficulty
in certain cases, such as the conveyance of sites for
places of public worship and Schools, but it did not appear
that the Public Libraries Act, 1855, empowered Trustees of
Charity property to make a free gift for the purposes of
that Act.
We were enabled, through the kind assistance of the
President of the Local Government Board and Sir John
Lubbock, to obtain the insertion of a Clause in the Public
Libraries Amendment Bill, 1890, authorising Charity
Trustees, with the sanction of the Commissioners, to grant
land for the purposes of a Public Library. The Bill having