Thomas Guy

Thomas Guy was the eldest child of a lighterman, coalmonger, and carpenter, born in Southwark, in south London. When his father died, in 1652, his family moved to Tamworth, Guy's mother's birthplace. He returned to London in 1660 and spent eight years as the apprentice of a bookseller. In 1668, he was admitted into the Stationers' Company and made a freeman of the City of London. The same year, he opened a bookstore in Lombard Street. Initially, Guy illegally imported Dutch bibles into England, as they were of higher quality than English bibles. A frugal bachelor, after nine years of business, in 1677, he paid for new facilities at the Tamworth free grammar school, where he had been educated before his apprenticeship. The next year, he built an almshouse in Tamworth. In 1679, he was contracted by the University of Oxford to produce bibles under their licence. He was elected as MP for Tamworth in 1695 and in 1701 he built a new town hall there. However, when the voters of Tamworth rejected him in 1707, he angrily refused to help them any further.[1][2][3]

By the late 1670s, Guy had begun purchasing seamen's pay-tickets at a large discount, as well as making large loans to landowners. In 1711, these tickets, part of the short-term 'floating' national debt, were converted into shares of the South Sea Company in a debt-for-equity swap. The South Sea Company was primarily a government-debt holding company; although it held a monopoly on British trade to Spanish America, this used less than 2% of the Company's capital.[4] In 1720, before the South Sea Bubble burst, he sold 54,040 stock for £234,428, making a profit of about £175,000.[5] He re-invested this money in £179,566 4% government annuities, £8,000 of 5% government annuities, and £1,500 East India Company shares.[6]

Foundation plaque, Guy's Hospital, London

Memorial to Guy in the Chapel at Guy's Hospital

In 1704, Guy became a governor of St. Thomas’ Hospital, in London. He gave £1000 to the hospital in 1707 and further large sums later. In 1721, having quintupled his fortune the previous year, he decided to found a new hospital ‘for incurables.’ Work on what became Guy’s Hospital began in 1721.

Thomas Guy died unmarried on 27 December 1724. Having already spent £19,000 on the hospital, his will endowed it with £219,499, the largest individual charitable donation of the early eighteenth century. He also gave an annuity of £400 to Christ’s Hospital as well as numerous and diverse other charitable donations.The rest of his estate, some £75,589, went to cousins, friends, and more distant relatives.[7]

On 24 March 1725, George I gave royal assent to a bill incorporating the executors of Guy’s will and formally thanking Guy for helping ‘the Honour and Good of the publick.’[8]

In 1995, 271 years after his death, a new dual carriageway by-passing Tamworth was named Thomas Guy Way in his honour.

Parliament allowed Guy’s Hospital to spend up to £2,000 to perpetuate Guy’s ‘Generous and Charitable Intentions.’ In 1732, the administrators commissioned Peter Scheemakers, who created a striking brass and marble statue of Guy in the livery of the Stationers’ Company, notably wearing no wig, an indication of Guy’s lack of ostentation. The monument includes the motto Dare Quam Accipere (‘to give than to receive’), a relief of Christ Healing the Sick Man, and another relief of the Good Samaritan. It stands in the courtyard of the main forecourt of Guy’s Hospital.

In 1776, the hospital built a new west wing, including a chapel. The administrators commissioned John Bacon to sculpt a life-sized marble funerary monument inside it. Bacon’s work portrays Guy as ‘a living Samaritan,’ helping a sick man. Roundels on the monument contain the figures of Industry, Prudence, Temperance, and Charity.[9]

As of June 2020, the future of these monuments is being reviewed by Guy’s Hospital Trust, in connection with a commission set up by London mayor Sadiq Khan to review statues and street names linked to slavery, due to controversy over Guy’s holdings in the South Sea Company.[10] On 11 June 2020, the Trust said they will remove them from public view.[11]

• A True Copy of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Guy, Esq. (London, 1725)
• John Noorthouck, A New History of London, vol. iii. ch. i. p. 684 (1773)
• Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, iii. 599 (1812)
• Charles Knight, Shadows of the Old Booksellers, pp. 3–23 (1865)
• S. Wilkes and G. T. Bettany A Biographical History of Guy's Hospital, (1892).
• Copy of the Last Will and Testament of Thomas Guy Esq. with an ACT for incorporating the Executors of the said Will (London, printed for the Governors of Guy's Hospital, 1815)
• Jane Bowden-Dan – Mr Guy's Hospital and the Caribbean (History Today June 2006)