| AdminHistory | The account books (H/M/1-4) show that the Poitou Society received regular small subscriptions and a number of modest legacies. These, with the church collections and a little interest from investments, produced an average annual income which rose from about £170 in the early years to over £200 by 1740. In the mid-century it was rather variable, since the legacies received were treated as income. Nearly all the receipts were distributed in small monthly pensions to the presumably deserving poor, but by 1750 there were holdings of £600 (nominal) in 3% Government Stocks.
A calamity then struck the Society. At an extraordinary General Meeting held on 31 July 1754 at 'Caffé de Sam' in Ludgate Street, it was recorded in the minutes that the Assembly had been informed of Claude Bennet's affairs (he had been Treasurer since 1743) and that he had agreed to convey all his property to his creditors. Philip Liège was nominated to find out the exact amount of Mr Bennet's liabilities to the Society, and to register their claim in the bankruptcy. Worse still, in the account book marked C (H/M/1/3), between the annual accounts for 1753 and 1754, there is a résumé of the Society's account with Mr Bennet, showing that he owed them the £600 invested capital (valued at £624), 'which he has sold and transferred secretly and appropriated unkown to the members'. The bankruptcy was a long drawn-out affair. Mr Bennet's net debt to the Society was £469, of which £258 was received in 1757 from his trustees, and apparently a little more later. No criminal proceedings are mentioned; it would no doubt have meant throwing good money after bad, besides reflecting on the Society's accounting methods. When Claude Bennet's death was reported in 1774, it was agreed to enquire whether he had left anything to the Society, to which he still owed £199. In 1780 they were still enquiring, but were informed that the widow Bennet was dead or remarried or had gone abroad.
After this episode, the Society seems to have declined gradually. As with the French Hospital, subscriptions dwindled in the later 18th century, as Huguenots merged with the general population; and on the other hand, not so many were in dire poverty. Average annual income, though varying, was maintained at about £150 until 1770, thereafter declining to the region of £100 or less. Except in a few years of hard weather, the Society economized by cutting out all monthly payments during three summer months. In each of the last three years of the surviving accounts, 1780-1782, the Treasurer was owed about £30 by the Society. A small investment, resulting from legacies, was held now in the names of three committee members, not the Treasurer's only.
The Society was wound up for lack of funds in 1812 (see H/M/1/1). |