from not quite such good cloth since more in quantity was needed for a dress, for thirty shillings. This, moreover, was to be bespoke tailoring; for the men, he wanted to know height and size round the chest and, in the case of the women, ‘whether they are short, middle size or tall as each may be’.
   Mr Brand, who never received his vital statistics, was only a background figure in an episode that enlivened the last months of the year 1858 and the early part of the following year and was, so far as is known, the only occasion when the Walter charity entered seriously troubled waters. The affair began and ended while a certain Josiah Rolls, who was the tenant of Pennis House and a relative newcomer to the district, was serving his only year as a Fawkham churchwarden. Rolls, a most cantankerous man, took the opportunity of launching a

virulent attack upon his landlord, a Mr  Cropper, complaining that the garments previously supplied had been of inferior quality and contending, without the least justification, that it was for the churchwardens to provide the coats and gowns, of course at Mr Cropper’s expense. To this Cropper naturally demurred; he was, moreover, advised that good coats could be obtained at one pound apiece and good gowns at ten shillings.
   Rolls had begun his assault from the flank by seeking the assistance of the Charity Commissioners, in whose flesh he became a very real thorn. When eventually he asked them to rule that the remnants of the annual dinner should be distributed amongst the participants, they closed a most tiresome correspondence by declining ‘to advise on the disposition of the fragments of any meal to be provided hereafter for the Poor’. In