ments.
With respect to the Magdalen Charity, we carefully examined the land occupied by Ransom and Ridley, and find it well used and fences well kept up. We are of the opinion that the present mode of distributing the funds of this charity is highly objectionable and that it confers no real benefit on anyone. We suggest that the rents should be distributed in sums of £10 amongst such poor deserving families of St. Leonards and All Saints as the Corporation shall select.
Of Saunders' Charity, we recommend that the £139 80s. 10d now in the Court of Chancery be obtained if possible, and appropriated towards the erection of a schoolroom on the ground lately purchased, and that the relators, Messrs. Breeds and Clarke be applied to as to whether they will resist the application.
The application, as is shown in the next year's items was not resisted and the money was recovered, less the legal expenses.
The following changes were also recommended by the committee to be effected by the Corporation:-"That for the better administration of justice, a barrister of 9 or 10 years standing, be engaged to attend Quarter Sessions, at ten guineas each session; that the Hundred and Audit dinners hitherto paid for by the Corporation be abolished; that Stephen Waters be apprenticed with Saunders Charity, to Hugh Penfold, ironmongerer and gas fitter; that the Hundred Court in future to be held annually, and that in settling the pier dues with the merchants no deductions be allowed for suppers as heretofore; that payment of the fee-farm rents be strictly enforced and that the same rents and compositions of rents of all premises held in fee and collected by the chamberlains be offered to the owners of the premises, out of which they are issuing at 20 years purchases on the amount of their respective rents, and that the annuity of £25 payable for the fee-farm rents to Mr. Milward be purchased of him provided he is willing to sell the same; that £500 be invested by the Mayor in the new Commissioners' Act when that Act has become law; and that the freehold of the ground applied for by the Castle parish overseers at the price of £400 be granted. The Corporation received and adopted all the recommendations of the Committee, except those which relate to the distribution of the Magdalen Charity fund, the payments for the ringing of church bells on H. M. birthday and Coronation anniversaries (which were to be continued as usual), and the price of land to the Castle parish overseers (which was to be £200, instead of £400).
To understand the purpose for which the said land was wanted, it is necessary to state that on the 30th of March, at a vestry meeting, the overseers and others resolved to apply to the Corporation for a conveyance of the freehold of the Workhouse ground, and upon what terms, so that a plan and elevation for 3 or 4 small houses might be prepared by Mr. Walter Inskipp. At another vestry meeting (June 21st), it was ordered that the offer of the Corporation to sell the ground to the overseers for £200 be accepted, the conditions being that no building was to be erected beyond a line from the corner of John Simmons's house, near the Priory Bridge to the corner of the Wellington Library. At the next meeting (Aug 2) it was resolved that £100 be raised during the year -
