§ Order of the Day for the Second Reading read.
LORD TEYNHAMMy Lords, the object of this Bill is to confirm a scheme of the Charity Commissioners for the application or management of certain charities in the County of Kent. The effect of the Bill will be to remove an anomalous position in relation to these charities at present operating in Rochester and Chatham. It relates to one-sixteenth of the income of a Rochester charity founded in 1579 by Richard Watts of that city (who also created the charity for Six Poor Travellers, which will be familiar to those of your Lordships who are readers of Charles Dickens) which the Court of Chancery of 1828 directed to be paid to the Treasurer of the Chatham Guardians to be applied in the relief of the poor rate for the benefit of the inhabitants of Chatham Intra.
As a consequence of the inclusion of Chatham Intra in the City of Rochester, the result would now be that if the income, now amounting to about £56 per year, were paid to the Rochester Corporation, to be applied by it in reduction of the rates levied upon the inhabitants of that part of Rochester formally comprising Chatham Intra, no possible benefit could accrue to them, as a reduction in the rates, even if practicable, would be less than 1d. in the £. With the concurrence of the Corporations of Chatham and Rochester, this scheme accordingly makes this income part of Watts' Charity for Rochester, and it will be used for the benefit of the inmates of the almshouses for old people of Rochester which he founded.
The further purposes of the scheme are to take over the duties of a body known as the Guardians of the Poor of the Parish of Chatham, who were not the ordinary board of guardians, now superseded by the local authority, but a special statutory board of trustees for Chatham created by local Act of the reign of George III and who had a statutory right to administer any charity for the poor in Chatham. When I mention that this ancient body of local guardians comprises any justice of the peace for Kent who resides in 726 Chatham, the High Constable of the Manor of Chatham (if he could be found), the churchwardens and the perpetual curate of the parish of Chatham, and twenty-four persons elected by the vestry of that parish, your Lordships will realise that it would be a distinct anomaly to continue its existence. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.
§ Moved, That the Bill be now read 2a.—(Lord Teynham.)
§ On Question, Bill read 2a, and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.