| Description | Columns provide for the names of inmates, date of entry, date of death or departure, and amount of pension, if any. Originally separate sections of the book were allotted to the various bodies responsible for maintaining inmates: the French Committee, the Hospital Corporation itself, and the sponsoring churches, charitable societies and private individuals.
After these sponsorships ceased about 1737, probably because of the Hospital's improved endowments, there are no further entries of pensions, and all the names are in one list, divided alphabetically, under the heading of the Corporation Franoise (the Hospital).
An entry in the 1737 list of Directors responsible for keeping various records, at the end of H/A/2/9 reads: 'M Demartz continuera à tenir le livre de l'entrée et de la sortie des pauvres'. This must be the register H/D/5/1, and as the entries up to 1762 are all in one hand, it is evidently that of Claude Desmaretz, who became Deputy Governor in 1759 and died in January 1763.
Although the cover (inscribed at some later date) says '1720-70', it must in fact have been started in 1730, as there are no entries for inmates who died before that year. On the other hand, all inmates living in 1730 were entered, and they include not only entries from 1721 onwards but seven persons transferred from the Pest House when the Hospital opened.
There are few notes, except reasons for departures. On a fly-leaf the book is entitled 'Trosième Livre', and there is a memorandum stating that the first book was kept by Mr Nissole, who was the first Concierge of the Hospital in 1717, and the second book, starting in June 1720, by Jean Chaboussant, the first Steward. These two books, probably unbound, have disappeared.. The volume is stamped front and back on its vellum cover with an oval design, like the Steward's ledger H/B/7/6/, started in 1737. |