This article was originally written by Michael Wild and probably appeared in the magazine of the West Middlesex Family History Society. It came into my possession via my great uncle Richard. Unfortunately I do not know where Michael Wild fits in the family tree nor whether he is alive. So if anyone knows please contact me.

William Wild’s (1770 – 1850) successful career and his charities make him the most fascinating member of his family that I have discovered to date. Despite appearances to the contrary he maintained his connections to West Middlesex, where his ancestors had lived prior to moving to Langley Marish in Buckinghamshire.

His parents, William Wild and Ann Blunt, were married at Harmondsworth on the 13th of March 1762, though they lived at Langley Marish on the farm which the Wild family had rented for about fifty years.  William Wild who was born sometime in 1770 was their only child and his birth is the subject of a peculiar entry in the Langley Marish marriage parish registers.  This records that ‘William Wild son of Anabaptist Parent’s desire was entered as born 1770’ and is dated 13th December 1770.  Although this entry does not give a precise date of birth it does confirm that the Wild family continued in a non-conformist tradition that can be traced back to the early years of the eighteenth century.

William Wild was still a child when his father died, aged forty-eight on 10th March 1782 and was buried four days later in Langley Marish.  In his will his father left his widow Ann a house in Sipson with both freehold and copyhold land.  It was stipulated that this property should pass to his son on Ann’s death.  While his money, the produce of his farm, his farming implements, household effects etc were to be divided between his widow and his son.  Of Ann Wild there is little more to relate.  She must have remarried for, when she died on the 23rd March 1814 at William Wild’s business premises in London aged 72, she is named as Ann Anthony.  (Pallots marriage index shows she married William Anthony of Beaconsfield, Bucks. at All Hallows Lombard Street, City of London in 1794) She was buried at Langley on 31st March in the Wild family grave.

To return to William Wild: three years after his father’s death he was bound apprentice to Ebenezer Johnstone, an ironmonger of Bishopsgate, on 6th December 1785 for the sum of £105.  He successfully completed his apprenticeship and on the 31st January 1793 was admitted to the freedom of the Ironmongers’ Company.  Also in this year he was chosen as one of the Gentleman Ushers on Lord Mayor’s Day. 

After obtaining his freedom William Wild spent about three years working for Ebenezer Johnstone and sometime in 1796 opened his own retail ironmongery business at 29 Wood Street, Cheapside, where he continued to do business until 1826.  Then for two years, the business is listed in the directories as being a partnership between ‘Wild and Lowe’.  As William Wild began living at 3 Tyndale Place, Islington in 1826 it is obvious that he had decided to retire and the partnership was a stepping stone towards his withdrawal from business.  He used his house in Islington as his home until his death there in 1850.

Within the Ironmongers’ Company the next significant event for William Wild came in 1816 when he succeeded in being elected to the Livery of the Company on his third attempt, the first having been in 1808.  That he took this step showed that he considered his prosperity assured, as liverymen lost the right to benefit from the Ironmongers’ charities which they had enjoyed as freemen.  Though they now possessed the privilege of participating in the government of the Company, through the periodic ‘Courts’ and the committees which oversaw the running of the Company and its charities.  William Wild was an extremely active participant in the Company’s affairs and regularly attended both the ‘Courts’ and, between 1818 and 1832, served on committees several times.

In 1832 and 1833 William Wild unsuccessfully entered the election for the Junior Wardenship of the Company.  In 1834 he was successful and thereafter followed the established pathway and became senior warden in 1835 and Master in 1836.  After having occupied the highest posts in the Ironmongers’ Company he continued to be an active member until 1848, less than two years before his death when, presumably, ill health prevented him participating further in the Livery Company of which he was plainly a devoted member.  Not only did he go to the periodic Courts but regularly attended the meetings of all the committees of the Company; permanent membership of these being a privilege enjoyed by all past Senior Wardens and Masters.  He died on the 1st April 1850 aged 79 at his house in Islington and was buried, according to his instructions, in the same grave as his mother at Langley Marish on the 8th April.  It seems he never married as the pedigree he supplied to John Nicholl, the historian of the Ironmongers’ Company, contains no mention of any marriage or offspring.

At the end of their year of office the Wardens and Masters each received a vote of thanks.  These were usually formal expressions of gratitude which accompanied the presentation of the arms of the Ironmongers’ Company, framed and glazed.  However that which William Wild received on the 27th July 1837, after his year of Master, is somewhat exceptional as he was additionally thanked “particularly for the considerate kindness and attention shewn to those under our protection in the several Charitable Institutions to which this Company are Patrons.”  In view of his later acts of charity this addition is very interesting.

He is said to been a frequent visitor to his native village of Langley Marish, and it is here that he founded Almshouses at Horsemoor Green, later 67 – 73 High Street Langley, in 1839.  The original deed of foundation, dated 28th September 1839, gave £800 to six trustees to fund the building and endowment of the almshouses.  These trustees were all local farmers, one being the founders kinsman William Wild, two being members of the Ive family and three being members of the Nash family.  They were made responsible for the building and administration of four almshouses which were to house four agricultural labourers of the age of sixty or above.  On his death William Wild further endowed the almshouses with £300 which was to be invested in bank 3% consolidated annuities.  It seems likely that the almshouses were not completed until 1841, the year in which William Wild’s kinsman presented him with a tankard engraved with his pedigree.  The occupants of the almshouses, besides receiving a place to live, were given a small weekly sum for their subsistence which stood at 3 shillings (15p) in the early 1860’s.  The end of the almshouses came in the 1950’s after they had been sold to the London County Council in 1956 and were demolished in by the council in 1959.  However to replace them, a row of four bungalows had been built to the north of the parish church in 1955.  Only the foundation inscription of the original almshouses survived this destruction, having been set in the wall outside the bungalows.  Unfortunately it was smashed by a drunken driver and has been replaced by a smaller modern replica.

I often wonder what might have inspired William Wild to this particular act of philanthropy.  Most likely he was moved by awareness that agricultural labourers who were too old to work ended their days in the harsh conditions of the workhouse and by a desire to provide these worn out workers with a home where they could end their days with dignity.  Perhaps either his experience with the Ironmongers’ Company almshouses or the or the example of Seymour and Kidderminster almshouses at Langley Marish inspired him to devise this solution to a widespread problem.  However, whatever the inspiration for this act of charity, William Wild must have been confident that almshouses provided an adequate solution as he attempted to inspire others to follow his example by publishing a lithograph of the almshouses.

It is very likely that the small watercolour of William Wild which survives in Langley Marish has some association with the foundation of the almshouses.  For it pictures him holding in his right hand a document bearing a seal which is probably intended as a representation of the foundation deed.  The painting itself is a half-portrait showing William Wild seated in a chair and wearing a double-breasted navy-blue coat with large copper buttons and a wide collar.  Underneath the coat can be seen a white waistcoat and a white neck-cloth is wound round his neck.  The only sign of ostentation is a gold ring which he wears on the little finger of his right hand.  His eyes are blue and his grizzled hair had obviously been dark in his youth.

William Wild’s other act of philanthropy can be seen in his will.  Besides numerous bequests to friends and relatives £100 to the London Truss Society of Queen Street, Cheapside and instituted the Wild Charity of the Ironmongers’ Company.  The latter was funded with £3,500 invested in bank 3% consolidated annuities and had some unusual features.  Its first objective was to provide lifetime pensions for William Wild’s housekeeper and ‘esteemed friend’, Eliza Yeatherd, and for his cook and ‘faithful servant’, Alice Weston.  These two were to receive, respectively, £60 and £30 each a year, and £20 and £5 within one week of William Wild’s death.  He also stipulated that they should receive his personal effects; Eliza Yeatherd being the recipient of his household goods (furniture, plate, linen, china etc), whilst Alice Weston was to have his clothes and bed linen.  Besides providing these two pensions the charity was to pay the clerk of the Ironmongers’ Company the sum of £5 annually. Any residue remaining was to be divided among the ‘non-free’ occupants of the Sir Geffery Almshouses and after the deaths of the two principal beneficiaries all the money they would have received was to be divided among the three occupants.

The term non-free needs some explanation.  The Geffery Almshouses were founded to benefit impoverished freeman of the Ironmongers’ Company, but any spare places not occupied by indigent freeman were allocated to applicants who were not freemen of the Company and could show that they could provide for their own subsistence.  In practice the non-free beneficiaries were nearly all elderly widows or spinsters.  The Wild charity has disappeared as a separate entity in this century, having been amalgamated with a number of other small charities of the Ironmongers’ Charity.  The income from these aggregated charities is both distributed among former residents of the Ironmongers’ two homes for the elderly at Christmas, and is used to buy newspapers and periodicals for these homes.

Alice Weston died in the same year as her employer, before she had an opportunity to benefit from his charity.  However Eliza Yeatherd not only enjoyed her annuity till her death in 1874 but took over her late employer’s house in Islington after his death.  She evidently retained connections with Langley Marish for she left small bequests to five members of the Ive family and 19 Guineas to be added to the endowment of the Wild almshouses.

When we come to William Wild’s association with West Middlesex, we find that these continued to his death.  As stated earlier, he inherited his father’s property in West Middlesex and is remembered as having distributed this property amongst his kinsmen at Langley Marish and Harmondsworth during his lifetime.  On his death two relatives living in Harmondsworth were remembered in his will.  Elizabeth Wild received £100 invested in 3% Consols and her son Thomas received a more unusual bequest.  He was given £500 as a contribution to the repayment of a loan of £800 borrowed from William Wild. It seems likely to me that this loan was used to build up the farming and market gardening business which eventually became the locally important firm of Wild and Robbins of Sipson.

The more I have found out about William Wild the more I have come to admire him.  He was clearly a man who had a successful career in business and used his wealth and abilities to benefit others.  The active role he took in the administration of the several charities in the charge of the Ironmongers’ Company and his founding of a charity administered by the Company both show this.  While the almshouses he founded and the legacies given to his friends and relatives show that he could not only devise a means of combating a widespread social problem but was grateful for the friendship of those close to him and was aware of their needs.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Amongst others thanks are due to the following:-
The late Mr D .J. Wild, Mr F. E. Adams, Mr J. McCluskey, The Master and Wardens of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, the Guildhall Library, the Greater London Records Office, the Buckinghamshire Record Office.

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