(Benjamin Franklin) | The founding—and funding—of the Pennsylvania Hospital

(Benjamin Franklin)

Pennsylvania Hospital Promissory Notes: an extensive collection of approximately 267 accomplished and approximately 80 unaccomplished promissory notes for the subscription to raise funds for the establishment of the Pennsylvania Hospital, most accomplished notes with pledgees’ signatures clipped (done upon full receipt of pledge) and with extensive docketing and endorsements on verso tracking payment. [Philadelphia: Printed by Benjamin Franklin and David Hall], 1751–1754; accomplished 1764–1798]

The notes in two formats, the larger, quarto format (ca. 216 x 165 mm, with wide variation and irregularity) typically printed with two promissory notes on the recto; disbound from three separate volumes and housed in individual sleeves within custom three-ring buckram binders, which also house the well-worn calf covers of the original bindings (not in Miller); the smaller, oblong octavo format (ca. 95 x 160 mm) printed with one promissory note on the recto, one note (Mordecai Lewis’s pledge of $100, 22 December 1797), with the red wax seal of witness Charles Caldwell; bound in three volumes, contemporary marbled boards, rebacked and recornered in brown calf (Miller 598).

An extraordinary collection of primary material relating to the founding of the first hospital in the United States. As Franklin wrote in his Account of the Pennsylvania Hospital (see following lot), “About the End of the Year 1750, some Persons, who had frequent Opportunities of observing the Distress of such distemper'd Poor as from Time to Time came to Philadelphia, for the Advice and Assistance of the Physicians and Surgeons of that City, how difficult it was for them to procure suitable Lodgings, and other Conveniences proper for their respective Cases, and how expensive the Providing good and careful Nurses, and other Attendants, for want whereof, many must suffer greatly, and some probably perish, that might otherwise have been restored to Health and Comfort, … and considering moreover, that even the poor Inhabitants of this City, tho' they had Homes, yet were therein but badly accommodated in Sickness, … several of the Inhabitants of the Province … did charitably consult together, and confer with their Friends and Acquaintances, on the best Means of relieving the Distressed, under those Circumstances, and an Infirmary, or Hospital, … being proposed, was so generally approved, that there was Reason to expect a considerable Subscription from the Inhabitants of this City, towards the Support of such an Hospital, but the Expence of erecting a Building sufficiently large and commodious for the Purpose, it was thought would be too heavy, unless the Subscription could be made general through the Province, and some Assistance could be obtained from the Assembly. …”

Franklin himself conceived the scheme of obtaining a £2,000 grant for the Hospital from the provincial Assembly, providing a like amount could be raised by private donation. The Assembly made a condition of the matching grant that subscribers sign a penal bond requiring them to pay twice the pledged amount should the subscription not be fulfilled by a certain date. Franklin and Hall printed the promissory notes (the early issues of which are not recorded in Miller’s Bibliography), and the £2,000 goal was easily met.

The earliest promissory notes provide a virtual who's who of mid-eighteenth-century Philadelphia, while the later books record the continued support the Hospital received from the community. The contributors documented in what was the first subscription book represent many of the earliest and most essential subscribers to the Hospital, including Israel Pemberton, the “King of the Quakers” (promissory note “No. 1”) and his merchant son Israel Pemberton Jr. (£100 each); physicians William Shippen (£10), Thomas Cadwalader (£25), and John Redman (£10); merchant and statesman Isaac Norris (£100); Anthony Morris, brewer, merchant, and mayor of Philadelphia (£70); Thomas Say, father of the pioneering American naturalist (£10); Samuel Rhoads, colonial architect and mayor of Philadelphia (£10); Caspar Wistar, glassmaker and one of the first German colonists in Pennsylvania (£50); Quaker merchant Reese Meredith (£40), later expelled by the Quakers for funding the privateer Warren; shipper Charles Stedman (£40); and merchant Joseph Wharton (£50). In all, these initial subscriptions totalled more than the £2,000 necessary for the Assembly’s matching disbursement, including a £25 pledge from Franklin himself and £10 from his printing partner, David Hall. The pledge-notes are accompanied by a contemporary manuscript index of the early subscribers; several notes are witnessed by Timothy Matlack, who in mid-July 1776 would engross the text of the Declaration of Independence on vellum for the signatures of the delegates to Continental Congress.

In his Autobiography, Franklin credits his “particular friend” Dr. Thomas Bond with first conceiving the idea of establishing a hospital in Philadelphia, but he also observes that “I do not remember any of my political manoeuvres, the success of which gave me at the time more pleasure, or wherein, after thinking of it, I more easily excus'd myself for having made some use of cunning.”

The founding of the Pennsylvania Hospital was one of Franklin's proudest and most important achievements. The present archive offers an unparalleled perspective on Franklin's role in the founding of this major American institution.

PROVENANCE

Sotheby’s, 16 June 1992, lot 170 (undesignated consignor)