A LONG HISTORY OF GIVING!


by Fiona Walker. In 1741, a wealthy Jersey widow,


Marie Bartlet left a hefty sum of money in her will to be used to build a poor house in the island.


I


t was only after another twenty-four years had passed, and a number of lawsuits relating to the will had been resolved, that work finally started on what was eventually to become Jersey’s first hospital. It was another thirty-three years before it finally opened its doors to the poor of the island. The sum bequeathed was 50,000 livres tournois, or a little under £4m at today’s value.


The proposed siting of the hospital was just one of the reasons for the long delay; Mrs Bartlet’s will stipulated that the building should be in St Aubin, whilst the States of the day argued that a site in Gloucester Street was the more appropriate. They finally won the day despite attempts by the Executors to switch it back to St Aubin, which at the time was the island’s main port.


Pause for a moment as you walk through the hospital today and


you can see details of donations given in more recent years inscribed on a series of wooden plaques still hanging in the hallway where the original dressed-granite building adjoins the more modern Gwyneth Huelin wing. Some benefactors are named and some are anonymous, but all have made generous contributions to financing the hospital over the nearly three centuries since Marie’s initial bequest. The story of hospital delays, costs and arguments over building sites may also be in the news today, but so too is that spirit of philanthropy which has endured from generation to generation.


Marie Bartlet wasn’t the first Islander to make a generous donation to her community, and she certainly wasn’t the last. Today there are almost three hundred charities registered with the Association of Jersey Charities, ranging from branches of massive national


General Hospital: interior of women's ward with nurse and six patients. c.1900 Société Jersiaise Photographic Archive


Page 6


Beyond 20/20 - Philanthropy


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