This was the place which it was permitted to certain promoters of a Dock Company to destroy utterly. A place with a history of seven hundred years, which might, had its ecclesiastical character been preserved and developed, have been converted into a cathedral for East London; or, if its secular character had been maintained, might have become a noble centre of all kinds of useful work for the great chaotic city of East London. They suffered it to be destroyed. It has been destroyed for sixty years. As for calling the place in Regent's Park St. Katherine's Hospital, that, I repeat, is absurd. There is no longer a St. Katherine's Hospital. As well call the garish new building on the embankment Sion College. That is not, indeed, Sion College. The London Clergy, who, of all people, might have been expected to guard the monuments of the past, have sold Sion College for what it would fetch. The site of the Cripplegate nunnery; of Elsing's Spital for blind men; of Sion College, or Clergy House, has been destroyed by its own trustees. The sweet old place, the peacefullest spot in the whole city, with its long low library, its Bedesmen's rooms, and its quiet reading room, is gone. You might just as well destroy Trinity College, Cambridge, and then stick up a modern wing to Somerset House, and call that Trinity. In the same way St. Katherine's by the Tower was destroyed sixty years ago.
Let me repeat that the Hospital suffered four changes.
First, it was founded by Queen Matilda, for the repose of her children's souls. Next, it was dissolved and again founded, and subsequently endowed as a Religious House with chantries, certain definite duties of masses for the dead, certain charitable trusts, and other functions. Thirdly, when the Mass ceased to be said it was secularized completely. Service was held in the church, but the Hospital became a perfectly secular charity, supporting a few almspeople with niggard hand, and a Master in great splendour. Fourthly, it was again treated as a semi-ecclesiastical foundation, for reasons which do not appear. At the same time, while its charities were enlarged, no duties were assigned to the Brothers, who seem to have been considered as Fellows, forming the Society, and, therefore, like the Fellows at Oxford and Cambridge, obliged to be in Holy Orders. Lastly, as we have seen, it was destroyed.