The Hall was the venue for series of
readings and music which were fashionable
events in the 1780s and 1790s. A Mr Lacy
frequently hired the Hall for this purpose,
and one of the documents in the archives is a
ballad song called William, set to the music
of Haydn, performed at one of his readings.
Other musical events had strong Masonic
links. A number of concerts were held
for the benefit of the Royal Cumberland
Freemasons’ School for the daughters
of deceased and indigent Freemasons,
beginning in 1788, the year of its foundation.
The girls were paraded round the hall to
sing during the concert intervals. One of
the most well-known of all depictions
of the Hall is on one such occasion.
The size of the Hall also made it attractive
for meetings of other organisations and
events in support of fashionable causes.
The Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund was formed
in 1803 to provide financial assistance to
the wounded and bereaved during the
Napoleonic wars. It held fundraising
meetings at the Hall. The Royal Humane
Society, founded in 1774 to advocate saving
people from death by the art of resuscitation
(then an unproven and somewhat
controversial technique), had a long
association with the Hall.
At its fundraising dinners the winners of
its medals were paraded around to applause
from the audience. One of the Society’s
earliest supporters had been William Dodd,
the Grand Chaplain, who had given the
oration at the opening of the Hall, but was
later hanged for forgery. The secretary to
the Society from 1813 to 1820 was Thomas
Pettigrew, a Freemason and later Surgeon
and Librarian to the Grand Master, the
Duke of Sussex.
The Hall also provided a meeting place
for local organisations, including a local
parish (St Giles) and the Covent Garden
Fund and Drury Lane Fund, which both
supported retired stage performers.
A note in the archives listing all the
organisations which hired the Hall in 1830
(contributing a total of £63 to Grand Lodge
funds) includes a number of organisations
linked to churches or religions. These
include the Reformation Society (probably
the Protestant Reformation Society),
the Church Missionary Society and the
Bible Society.
A series of drawings by the artist Thomas
Stothard in the Library and Museum
collection depicts a meeting of the British
and Foreign Bible Society around 1815
attended by the Persian ambassador in
national costume. The Continental
Association, formed in 1819 to give
Protestant teaching in Roman Catholic
countries, was another society which
met at the Hall, twice in 1830.
This list also shows the Hall being used by
a number of “national” societies such as the
Society of Ancient Britons (for the Welsh)
and the Highland Society of London.
The Benevolent Society of St Patrick
held meetings in the Hall and dinners in
the Freemasons’ Tavern, which stood in
Great Queen Street in front of the Hall.
Inevitably large-scale events occasionally
got out of hand, and concern about this
was a constant problem for Grand Lodge
as the owners of the Hall. One of the most
fascinating pieces of archive material to
come to light during the project was a note
signed by Charles Kent, Honorary Secretary
of the Charles Dickens Dinner. He was
guaranteeing that the Hall would be returned
to its previous state immediately after the
dinner for Charles Dickens, held in 1867,
prior to the author’s departure for his second
American public-reading tour. Kent, a fellow
journalist and writer, was a lifelong friend of
Dickens (and was the recipient of the last
letter that Dickens ever wrote, produced an
hour before Dickens’s death).
There is currently an exhibition in the
Library and Museum called Elegance and
Splendour about the history of the first Hall
using documents, objects and images from
the collections and exploring the building
of the Hall, how it was paid for, its growth
and development, its impact on the
local community and its contribution
to London life. The exhibition runs until
December 2005.
The documents which have been
catalogued are now available on the Library
and Museum’s own online catalogue at
www.freemasonry.london.museum/catalogue or at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a
A leaflet giving details about the archive
material on Freemasons’ Hall is available
from the Library and Museum on 020 7395
9257 (also in large print format) or can be
downloaded from the Library and Museum
website on www.freemasonry.london.museum/archives
Diane Clements is Director, the Library
and Museum of Freemasonry
| |
Above:
The ballad William set to
Haydn’s music
Above:
List of 1830 hirings
Above:
The Benevolent Society of St
Patrick, one of several national
bodies to use the Hall
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