Charity Children Choirs

From 1704 to 1877 they combined for an annual benefit concert and the impression of massed voices numbering in the thousands was remarked on by visitors including William Blake, Joseph Haydn and Hector Berlioz.

[6] Sir Gilbert Elliot described the National Thanksgiving for George III's recovery 23 April 1789 in a letter:[7] …the drums stopped, and the organ began; and when the King approached the centre all the 6,000 children set up their little voices and sang part of the Hundredth Psalm.

1789 letter of Sir Gilbert Elliot[8]Haydn attended the service on 9 June 1791:[9] 8 Tage vr.

Pfingsten hörte ich in St Pauls-Kürch 4000 spittall Kinder nachstehendes lied singen, ein Performer gab den Tact dazu, keine Music rührte mich zeit lebens so heftig als diese andachts volle und unschuldige [ Anglican chant example] NB: alle Kinder sind neu gekleidet und ziehen processionaliter dahin, der organist spilt ganz artig und einfach die Melodie vor, alsdan fiengen alle zugleich an zu singen.A week before Whitsun I heard 4000 charity children sing the following hymn in St Paul's church; a "Performer" gave the beat.

26 from John Jones' Sixty Chants Single and Double (1785)] The children are all dressed in new clothes and enter in procession; the organist plays the tune nicely and simply and then all begin together in singing.Haydn's biographer Albert Christoph Dies reports that after reading him this account from his pocket notebook, Haydn added "I stood there and wept like a child.

Blake's "Twas on a Holy Thursday" (1789), (Copy AA, a 1826 print in The Fitzwilliam Museum ). [ 1 ] "Holy Thursday" here refers to Ascension rather than Maundy Thursday .
Four thousand charity children at Treaty of Utrecht procession along the Strand
The Charity Children sang at St. Paul's Cathedral at a service in honour of George III's recovery in 1789.