| Date | 20 January 2012 |
|---|---|
| Source | Slough Observer |
| Reference | VP-0014 |
| Volume | Views of the Past |
| Collection | Views of the Past |
Transcript
A haven for a millionaire
Views of the past by Elias Kupfermann
I RECENTLY purchased a postcard of the interment of George Herring at The Haven Of Rest in 1906. I discovered that The Haven Of Rest was a group of almshouses situated in Bridge Road, Maidenhead (not to be confused with the historic 17th-century Salter’s Almshouses).
I now wanted to find out more about George Herring and started to delve into the late Victorian history books. This is the story of a gambling man who made good by giving his large fortune, amassed from horse racing, away to the poor.
George Herring was born in 1832 to an extremely poor family in Clerkenwell. He began his career as a carver in a boiled beef shop in Ludgate Hill in the City of London.
During his early youth, he saved money and started to build up a fortune by betting on horse races and later became a turf commission agent or bookmaker.
In 1855 he was a key witness in the Rugeley Poisoner murder case where William Palmer, an owner and breeder of horses, was convicted of poisoning a fellow gambler. Herring soon became a highly respected ‘man of the turf‘ and looked after the business of many members of society such as the Earl of Westmoreland and the Duke of Beaufort.
From the 1880s onwards, he started to give his fortune away to the poor. His charitable work included giving financial aid to William Booth, of the Salvation Army, to give relief to the poor.
By the 1890s, George Herring had a house in Maidenhead, known as Bridge House, adjacent to the Thames, which later became Murray’s Club. In 1895, a short distance from Bridge House, he built a series of almshouses centred on an open-fronted courtyard. They housed people of reduced circumstances. Accommodation was built for 12 married couples and is still in use today. George Herring’s initials can be seen in the brickwork and on the wrought iron entrance gates.
Herring died in November 1906 after an operation for appendicitis and left almost £ 1 million to London charities. George Herring was cremated in Woking, and the urn containing his ashes was buried under a sundial at The Haven Of Rest in Maidenhead.
His legacy, even today, lives on through the charities he supported, and also a bust commemorating his philanthropy still survives in the Mansion House in London. In 1960, a series of flats in Salters Road, Maidenhead, were built near the Haven of Rest, which still bear the name of George Herring.
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