Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/378

338 338 PUTTERWORTH AND CHURCHILL, strengthened by his appointment as Commissioner of Income and Property Tax, and Land and Assessed Taxes for London, and also as Commissioner of Roads. On his first arrival in town he had served in a light volunteer regiment, recruited to resist the aggression of the great Napoleon ; and on his retire- ment from the corporation, about the year 1841, he received a captain's commission in the Royal London Militia. We gather something of Butterworth's general kindness and consideration to those beneath him in station from the following anecdote : Shortly after the passing of the new Poor Law Act in 1834, the guardians of the West Surrey Union ordered that the annual Christmas dinner for the workhouse inmates should consist, as wont, of roast beef and plum-pudding. The Poor Law Board a new broom was horrified at this munificence, and sent down their inspector, Dr. Kay, to inquire into the proposed extravagance. He offered a compromise by substituting boiled beef for roast, not that it would be in any degree cheaper, but that (a satisfactory object, we suppose, to the Board) it would not be quite so palatable. Butter- worth, who was one of the guardians, was inflexible, and finally sent in his resignation ; but as he was too useful a local authority to be spared, the Board sent back the resignation, and permitted the paupers to feast upon the disputed beef, roast. In his later years Butterworth took much interest in church-building, and at Tooting, St. Dunstan's-in-the- West, and his native city of Coventry, he subscribed large sums for that purpose. After the death of his wife, which occurred in 1853, he gradually withdrew from general society, though he