Loan 96 RLF 3/9

Bound volume containing the annual reports for 1854-1857 inclusive, as well as further documents.

The documents for each year contain an Address to the Anniversary (detailing the aims and history of the Fund), a list of the officers of the corporation (Patron, President, Vice-Presidents, Council, Committee, Registrars, Treasurers, Auditors, honorary officers, Bankers, Secretary and Collector), and lists of Members of the Corporation with details of their donations, Donors and Subscribers not yet qualified as members, miscellaneous benefactions, 'Deceased Benefactors of Twenty Pounds and Upwards', 'Officers of the Corporation, Deceased' and 'Chairmen of the Anniversaries.' For each year there are also Auditors' reports, Treasurers' reports and a Secretary's report for the previous year and an updated table of grants made in previous years, as well as details of the stewards of and donations made at the Anniversary dinners.

For each year, there are also varying records of the Anniversary Dinner and other additional contents as described below:

1854 (12 pp.+ 84 pp. + 13pp.): Charter, Laws, Bye-Laws and Regulations, dated 1848; 'Report of the Anniversary', 3 May 1854, with transcript of speeches (chair: Philip Henry Stanhope, Lord Mahon; principal speakers: John William Donaldson; John Russell; Edward Henry Stanley, Lord Stanley; George Ferguson Bowen; William Smith; Sir Erskine Perry; William Lassell; Lieutenant-General Sir Charles William Pasley; Whitwell Elwin; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley; Edward Craven Hawtrey; Jared Bell Waterbury; James Whiteside); Charter, Laws, Bye-Laws and Regulations, dated 1856

1855 (7 pp. + 86 pp. + 13pp.): Pasted-in document rebutting unflattering comparisons between the Fund and the Artists' General Benevolent Institution; Report of the Special Committee on a new Charter, with report of the sub-committee chaired by Charles Dickens and opinion from Serjeant Henry Alworth Merewether; 'Report of the Anniversary', 23 May 1855, with transcript of speeches (chair: Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford; principal speakers: Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin; Colonel Gibson; Charles Baldwin; Connop Thirlwall, Bishop of St David’s; Charles Neate; Sir Archibald Alison; James Buchanan, American Ambassador to London; John David Macbride, Alexander Beresford Hope; John West; Charles Wykeham Martin; John Scott Russell); Charter, Laws, Bye-Laws and Regulations, dated 1856

1856 (70 pp. + 13 pp.): Charter, Laws, Bye-Laws and Regulations, dated 1856 (no anniversary report)

1857 (84 pp.): 'Report of the Anniversary', 19 May 1857, with transcript of speeches (chair: William Cowper; principal speakers: Henry Alford, Dean of Canterbury; Lieutenant–Colonel Edward Bruce Hamley; Arthur Helps; Richard Monckton Milnes; Thomas Chandler Haliburton; Sir Roderick Impey Murchison; David Livingstone; Major Bird (for the Prince of Oude); William Makepeace Thackeray)