But it is necessary to tell as briefly as possible the story of the oldest of the two institutions of which this building is to be an accessory--not only the oldest of these two, but probably _the oldest_ voluntarily supported orphan asylum in London, since it dates from 116 years ago, when George II. was King, when Louis XV. was scandalising Europe and preparing the Revolution, when Wesleyan Methodism was commencing a vast religious revival, when Doctor Johnson had but just finished writing his dictionary, and when William Hogarth was painting those wonderful pictures which are still the most instructive records of society and fashion as seen in the year 1758.
It was in that year, on the 10th of May, that fourteen periwigged and powdered gentlemen met at the George Inn, in Ironmonger Lane, in order to discuss how they might best found an asylum for forty orphan children--that is to say, for twenty boys and twenty girls.
They soon came to a solemn decision that there was a "sufficient subscription for carrying the scheme into execution," and a record to that effect was soberly entered in the very first clean page of the first minute-book of the Charity, with the additional memoranda that a committee was chosen, and a treasurer appointed to collect and take care of the money necessary to support the undertaking.
The early minute-books of this charity, by the way, are models of serious penmanship. Grave achievements of caligraphy, with engrossed headings, elaborate flourishes, and stiff formal hedge-rows of legal verbiage, suggestive of the fact that the secretaries were either attorneys or scriveners, and regarded the entries in a minute-book or the opening of a new account as very weighty and important events not to be lightly passed over. In this they were probably right: and, at all events, just so much of the old methodical exactitude has come down to the present day in the history of the institution, that the published accounts of the Orphan Working School have been referred to by the _Times_ as models of condensation with a clearness of detail, which may be regarded as the best indication of a well-ordered and economical administration.
It might not be too much to say that the old principle of carrying a scheme into execution only when there are sufficient subscriptions still characterises the operations of the institution. At all events, Mr. Soul had secured enough money for the completion of the new building at Margate before the actual work commenced, and his experience told him that funds would be forthcoming to maintain it.