Rainy Day Trust History

The first 131 years of the Rainy Day Trust (formerly the Royal Metal Trades Benevolent Society) as reported in the Hardware Trade Journal’s 100th Anniversary Issue on 6 September 1974

ONE OF THE PLEASURES of celebrating a centenary is that most business contacts, friends, and associates started long after you did - but the charity organisation with which this journal has for so long been closely associated is, in fact, very much older than ourselves. The Royal Metal Trades Benevolent Society was founded in 1843.

The first meeting was in the London Tavern in Bishopsgate Street, London, in March of that year. The society was founded to grant pensions to members of the trade and their widows and was known as the Iron, Hardware and Metal Trades Pension Society.

The ball fund, now known as the benevolent fund, was started in 1857, but the society received tremendous impetus in its 50th jubilee year when it attracted royal interest. The Prince of Wales (to become King Edward VII) attended the anniversary celebrations and, presiding at the Guildhall, announced that Queen Victoria had commanded that the society be designated the Royal Metal Trades Pension Society.

Some well-known names were associated with those early days, including Mr. Richard Moser, of Moser, Ltd., later to become Moser, Nettlefold (now Nettlefold Willen, Ltd.) and Mr. R. W. Kennard, of Falkirk Iron Co., later Allied Iron-founders, now part of the Glynwed group (both were early vice-presidents). Donors during the first year included Mr. Richard Tann, senior, of Tann safes, Mr. Joseph Tonks, of Birmingham and Mr. J. S. Nettlefold. In 1848 Mr. Charles Chubb, of the Chubb lock and safe firm, was also a donor.

With the aid of the then Duke of Norfolk, an endowment fund was created in 1897 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s reign -  a fund which is still in use and which is not covered by the constitution. This means that funds from it are able to give help in cases outside the scope of the constitution.

The words “and Benevolent” were added to the title in 1921. Court interest continued and in 1925-26, when Sir William R. Pryke, Bart (Pryke and Palmer, Ltd.) was Lord Mayor of London, the society again had the Prince of Wales (later to become the Duke of Windsor) at the anniversary festival at the Guildhall.

The annual golf competition is now very justly a popular fund-raising and social event. It started, bi-annually, in 1927 with a silver challenge cup donated by the president, R. W. Kennard. When he died in 1929, he had been president for 33 years and was the third member of his family to hold that office.

The following year was notable for the arrival in the organisation of L. H. Lindsay, a young man just out of school, who is today the secretary and who, apart from five-and-a-half years in the army during the Second World War, has spent his working life with the society.

The golfing tradition was extended with a competition in 1935 to commemorate the jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary. This was organised by Frank Love Ltd., and by the Hardware Trade Journal, and thus this journal started a close association with the society which has continued to the present day. Golf meetings are held in Birmingham and Bristol.

Also in that year, Mr. W. Farmer, the secretary of the society, died after 43 years with the organisation, 23 of them as secretary. Mr. F. P. Studdert was appointed secretary, and Mr. Lindsay became assistant secretary.

With the coming of the war, Mr. Lindsay was called up, but it was his chief, Mr. Studdert, who was tragically killed in an air raid in 1940. Mr. G. Coomes was appointed secretary. The following year the blitzes again made their mark: the offices in Knightrider Street were totally destroyed and most of the archives of the society were lost.

Guest, Keen and Nettlefold offered office accommodation in Cannon Street, and the society gratefully moved there until after the war in Europe. Because of the war, the centenary year of 1943 could not be celebrated.

The H.T.J. was already involved with the society through the golf promotion and other contacts, but after VE-Day, when G.K.N. naturally wanted their office accommodation back, Benn Brothers Ltd., publishers of the H.T.J., invited the society to take up accommodation in their headquarters, Bouverie House in Fleet Street. This was the idea of the late Cdr. A. 0. Gillett, who came to Benn Brothers when Benns acquired another publishing firm before the war. Cdr. Gillett became a managing director and the director responsible for the H.T.J. His successors at Benns have continued the close links - Mr. Neil Livingstone Wallace and Mr. Timothy Benn (the present managing director), as well as Sir John Benn.

Mr. Alban Hills, the immediate past editor of the journal, was on the board of management of the society until his retirement in 1972 and this tradition is today kept up by Mr. Timothy Benn and Mr. Dennis Matthews, advertisement director of the H.TJ.

Mr. Lindsay returned from the forces (he finished as a Q.S.M. in the Royal Pioneer Corps) to Bouverie House, and became secretary on the death of Mr. Coomes in 1953.

In that year, the society purchased its first bed at Warham Grange Residential Home in Croydon for its pensioners - a second bed was purchased in 1962.

It was 1957 before the society could hold its “centenary” dinner, with the president, Sir Geoffrey Summers, Ban, presiding, and the guest of honour, the Earl of Verulam.

When Bouverie House was sold by Benn Brothers in 1972 the society moved out to the eastern suburbs - its present address is 223 Cranbrook Road, Ilford, Essex 1G1 4T0. Board of management meetings are still often held in the Benn headquarters in New Street Square, just behind Fleet Street.

Last year there were two further landmarks — the constitution was amended and the title changed to the Royal Metal Trades Benevolent Society, and Mr. Lindsay was awarded the M.B.E.

Deserving people within the trade become pensioners on the recommendations of the subscribers, and ~there are now about 160 pensioners. Between the wars, there was a peak of about 300, but the inception of the state scheme naturally made a great difference to this number. In its 131 years, the society has raised £719,553 and has helped 3,625 pensioners.

The subscription fee is still, incredibly, only £1 a year for individuals, or £21 for a life membership. From April this year the rates payable to pensioners have increased to top levels of £l38 for subscribers and their widows or widowers; £115 a year for non-subscribers who were employees of a subscribing firm, and £69 for their widows or widowers; and £86.25 a year for non-subscribers who were employees of a non-subscribing firm, an £57.50 for widows or widowers.

Subscriptions and donations come from a wide range of people across the trade, but particular support has always been forthcoming from Southampton, Bristol, Nottingham, Birmingham, and course the London and Southern Counties Ironmongers Association, as well as the London an other staff associations.

This revenue, of about £12,000 a year, is increased by about £8,700 from investment income making a total of well over £20,000. It is interesting to note that the profits from investment have always covered management expenses, so the subscriptions and donations can be entirely put at the disposal of pensioners.

Thus the Royal Metal Trades Benevolent Society is one of the oldest charities in British industry and one which has attracted royal and distinguish interest on many occasions. Its services to the hardware, ironmongery, builders’ merchants, and manufacturing distributor trades have been splendid and sustained.