| H i s t o r y - Poor Fund |
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Poor Fund
It was a practice of the early Methodists to operate soup kitchens as one means of providing for the poor and destitute in their localities. The chapels established and subscribed to 'Poor' funds as the means of financing such enterprises. The record of a Leaders' Meeting held in January 1886 gives a typical instance of this practice; it was agreed on this occasion to allocate 20s. from the Knutsford |
Chapel's Poor fund for the provision of soup to the poor. In
the following year the allocation was increased to £3.
Although the 'Poor Fund' as such has long ceased, the responsiveness of the Church to those in need has not diminished. Help for the poor indeed continues, as depicted in the newspaper picture taken during the 1990s which bore this same caption. It shows members of Knutsford's |
Methodist Church with some of the donated food and clothes received from their collection, in this case, for the hungry and homeless in inner Manchester. |