the world of private banking

PRIVAtE BANKERS AND PHILANtHROpy 249
or both. Edward nurtured their allegiance with reciprocal favours. As Prochaska
has put it:
In an unwritten social contract, Edward VII offered good shooting, respectability
and honours to the moneyed elite, but at a price; and the price was, more often
than not, support for his favoured charities. In 1899 for example, he had a whipround
of 24 of his friends including [Ernest] Cassel and Henry Bischoffsheim
when his bridge-playing friend Agnes Keyser sought to turn her house into a
hospital for officers returning from the Boer War (it later took the name King
Edward VII’s Hospital for Officers).... Edward VII was quick to lavish gifts and
honours on his entourage in exchange for voluntary service and contributions.
Medicine was the most favoured object of Edward’s charitable interests. In this
he was encouraged and guided by Sir Henry Burdett, his unofficial but indefatigable
advisor. Burdett, son of a provincial clergyman, worked first in a Birmingham
bank, then as administrator of hospital charities. From 1881 to 1898 Burdett
was Secretary to the Shares and Loans Department of the Stock Exchange, and
networked energetically in the City whilst maintaining his commitment to hospital
philanthropy, winning the confidence of Edward, and gambling enthusiastically
and successfully. Along with Ernest Cassel, Burdett advised Edward on his
personal investments. He drew financiers into royal circles and persuaded both
royalty and financiers into support for his favoured charities. In 1889 he greatly
enhanced the prospects of the National Pension Fund for Nurses by securing the
patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales and the sponsorship of the bankers
Junius Morgan, Lord Rothschild and Everard Hambro 10 .
Shortly before his death, Edward persuaded Cassel and Lord Iveagh (Edward
Guinness) to make major contributions to the foundation of Britain’s first radium
institute, modelled on that in Paris, which opened in Portland Place in 1911. 11
However, his major medical endeavour, encouraged and assisted by Burdett, was
the foundation in 1897 of the Prince of Wales’ Hospital (later, and still, the King’s)
Fund for London. This was founded to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond
Jubilee, to raise funds to meet the growing funding crisis in the London voluntary
hospitals, the chief providers of medical and nursing training, research and much
medical treatment for poorer patients. 12 It was governed by a Council to which
large donors were automatically elected, and whose membership was otherwise
hand-picked by the Prince. It was a striking example of the manner in which
charitable gatherings reinforced influential networks. As Prochaska puts it: ‘No
other voluntary society of the day brought together the monarchy, the great and the
Ibid., p. 143.
Ibid., pp. 129–30.
10
Ibid., p. 130.
11
Ibid., p. 153.
12
This account of the King’s Fund is derived mainly from Prochaska, Philanthropy.