Page 101 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

Lodge of the Nine Muses 101

A tablet on the frame states that “During the interval of twenty years of office, he
raised the income of the Institution from £576 to £3100.”
For the particulars of Bro. Crew’s connection with the Institution for Girls the
writer has to thank W. Bro. Maurice Beachcroft, the present Secretary.
Bro. Crew’s name appears in the list of members for 1862, apparently as a non-
subscribing member. On 11 March 1862, Bro. Clabon, his successor as Secretary,
“reported that he had received from the late Secretary the old Books of the
Lodge”.
So Bro. Crew disappears after a membership of nearly thirty years. His death
occurred not very many years afterwards (1870), but the minutes continue silent.
Bro. Dr Whitsed was installed as W.M. in February 1836, but for reasons given
in a long letter dated 4 March 1836 and preserved in the minutes, he returned a
few weeks later to Wisbech, to resume a former medical practice. There he was
a founder, and in 1860 first W.M., of the Lodge of United Good Fellowship, No.
809, still very much alive in that town with a membership of about a hundred,
and was Mayor in 1845 and 1851.
The Lodge at Wisbech has a bust of the good Doctor and an engraved portrait
is in private hands in the town. For these particulars we are indebted to W. Bro.
Girling, P.A.G.D.C., Secretary of the Lodge, who has also most obligingly made
efforts to recover Bro. Whitsed’s song, alas without result.
Bro. Dr Whitsed, as we read in the minutes for 14 February 1837, “was
continued a Member of the Lodge on payment of the usual fees to the Grand
Lodge if any be required”. This was an arrangement not uncommon at the time.
After this meeting “The Brethren retired to a sumptuous banquet over which
Brother Rowley W.M. presided with such affability and ability as afforded
unmixed happinefs to the Brethren.”
Among the visitors was a Bro. Sola, “Profefsional”, no doubt a singer or other
musician paid to entertain the Brethren. He is described in another place as of
the Union of Hearts Lodge, Geneva, a title which to-day provokes melancholy
reflections.
Bro. Crew’s references to the banquets are frequent; some of them are decidedly
quaint. One or two typical examples may be given: