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necessity therefore exists for ample means of recreation being
provided in the institution.
Your memorialists would further urge that this very crowded
population consists largely of the poorer classes supplying labour
to the non-resident employers in the City. That in consequence
of the great pressure for residences by persons who, from the
condition of circumstances, are obliged to live near their work ;
the price of land is exceptionally high, and your memorialists will
therefore be placed in greater difficulties as to purchasing land
than would be the case in the other divisions of the metropolis.
Your memorialists, therefore, appeal with confidence for a
promise of support, both to the establishment and endowment,
from the Charity Commissioners.
And your memorialists will ever pray.
Dated this 18th day of June, 1883.
(Signed)
John H. Rose, M.A., Vicar of Clerkenwell, and
Chairman of the Conference.
Robert Paget, Vestry Clerk of Clerkenwell, and
Hon. Secretary to the Conference.
The Rev. J. H. Rose, M.A., addressing the Commissioner,
said the deputation appeared there on behalf of the central
parishes of London—Clerkenwell, St. Luke's, and Holborn—
who had sent representatives to a Conference, and finally decided
to come to the Commissioners to ask for a grant out of the City
Parochial Charities' Fund for a peoples' palace or technical
institute. The proceedings of the Conference were embodied in
the memorial. The deputation would call attention to the very
densely populated part of London which it affected, and yet a
part singularly poor in facilities either for instruction or
recreation. They had no open space worthy of note.
The Commissioner—Clerkenwell Green? (Laughter).
The Vicar—But that does not possess a blade of grass, unfortunately.
As to instruction, they had no technical schools
within their border, and he thought he might say their population
was one which specially needed technical instruction. Clerkenwell,
St. Luke's, and Holborn had all been famous for watch,
clock, and chronometer making. They needed something in the
way of technical instruction, and they had, he thought, a claim