Page 97 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

An Account of the Lodge of the Nine Muses 97

of the Craft. He would have liked that the Lodge should qualify as a Founder
Lodge, but the subscription of 100 guineas, which this would entail, could not be
met out of the Lodge funds, and he felt, in view of the calls made on individual
Brethren in connection with the M.M.M. fund, that he was precluded from asking
for individual subscriptions. He hoped however that if the Lodge continued to
subscribe £10. 10. 0 annually, it might be entered as a Founders Lodge when the
total subscriptions amounted to 100 guineas ....
[A member] (this was Bro Myers) then signified his willingness to make a donation
of 50 guineas. The members greeted this generous offer with acclamation.
Five other Brethren present promised 5 guineas each, so providing, with the
ten guineas voted by the Lodge, 85 of the required 100 guineas.
On 12 February 1924 the Treasurer reported that subscriptions “amounting
to 100 guineas had been promised which would enable the Lodge to qualify as
31
a Founder of the Freemasons’ Hospital and Nursing Home”, which the Lodge
in due course became.
Two members of the Lodge have since been patients in the hospital: both
owed the continuance of their lives to the skill of the surgical and nursing staff,
and both brought away most grateful memories.
In November 1933, “The Treasurer reported that [a member] desired to make a
gift to the Lodge of £100 – 3½% Conversion Loan to form the nucleus of a special
fund to be used at the discretion of the Brethren for the relief of distressed brethren.”
This munificent gift was gratefully accepted by the Lodge, and the fund
established. The fund is administered by the Master and senior Officers without
necessarily bringing the matter up in open Lodge.
In March 1936, the Lodge voted the guinea asked towards rebuilding the
Masonic Temple at Quetta, damaged by earthquake in 1935.
The generosity of the members remains unabated and in January 2008 the
Lodge received the Metropolitan Grand Master’s Diaamond Award for the
London App-eal for the RMBI, (following a donation of £12,500). In 2010 the
Lodge was a Grand Patron of all four of the current Masonic Charities which
are now ‘The Grand Charity’, the ‘Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution’, the
‘Masonic Trust for Grils and Boys’ and the ‘Masonic Samaritan Fund’.

31 The Hospital closed in 1999 and the capital used to found the “New Masonic Samaritan
Fund” which was later relaunched with wider remit as the “Masonic Samaritan Fund.”