Bespoke Tailors' Benevolent Association
51°32′47″N 0°09′15″W / 51.54640015387067°N 0.15413354233363655°W
The Bespoke Tailors' Benevolent Association is a charity supporting journeyman tailors no longer able to work due to blindness, illness or old age, and those tailors' spouses.[1] As of 2022, it was run by ten trustees and 15 volunteers.[2]
History
[edit]It was formed on 10 February 1837 as the Benevolent Institution for the Relief of Aged and Infirm Journeymen Tailors. Its founder and first president was a successful West End tailor named John Stultz.[1] It purchased land at the south end of Queens Crescent, just off Haverstock Hill in north London, where between 1842 and 1843 it built the Tailors' Asylum.[1] This consisted of ten almshouses (the southernmost of which was occupied by the chaplain) and a central chapel consecrated by Charles James Blomfield, Bishop of London, all in brick and stone in the neo-Gothic style[1] designed by T Meyer.[3] On 6 July 1859 it was granted a royal charter.
In 1937, the Institution sold off the site to the London County Council, which built council flats on it, though the charity moved to a new building in South Croydon and in 1952, to a third one in Wandsworth.[1] They finally moved out of the Wandsworth site, which was rebuilt (but kept at the disposal of the tailoring trade) as Tailors' Court by the Shaftesbury Housing Association.[1] The charity's records before 1965 are now at the London Metropolitan Archives.[4]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f "Tailors Benevolent Institution". Lost Hospitals of London.
- ^ "THE BESPOKE TAILORS' BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION". Charity Commission for England and Wales.
- ^ "Illustrated London News, 1843".
- ^ "Records of the Tailors Benevolent Institution for the Relief of Aged and Infirm". The National Archives.