About Thomas Guy

Thomas Guy
Tamworth’s Famous Benefactor


Thomas Guy Snr was a lighterman, coalman and carpenter.

Thomas Guy was born in 1644 at the family home in Pritchards Alley in Fair Street, Southbank. Thomas Guy’s mother, who’s maiden name was Ann Vaughton was the daughter of William Vaughton of Tamworth, a very influential family, members if which for generations had become bailiffs, burgesses and church wardens to the ancient borough of Tamworth.

During his early years, Thomas Guy grew up in London, besieged with poverty and starvation. In 1652, after the sudden death of her husband, Mrs. Ann Guy returned to her hometown of Tamworth with her three children, Thomas, John and Ann. It was there that Thomas was educated at Tamworth’s free Grammar school where he learned Latin and Greek. At the age of 16 the young Thomas Guy was apprenticed for 8 years to John Clark, a bookseller and bookbinder, who’s business was carried out in Mercer’s hall porch, Cheapside, London. A year later on 18th June 1661 in the register of St. Editha’s Church, Tamworth.

Thomas Guy continued his apprenticeship living in this mothers’ shop in London. Being a man with some means, probably from his fathers estate, he set himself up in business as a bookseller and publisher in a little corner house at the junction of Cornhill and Lombard Street, opposite the Mansion House, London. He stocked his shop with approximately £200 worth of books. Very soon he had made a vast fortune from publishing selling books, many of which were bibles. As well as being a successful bookseller, he was also a marvellous salesman. He managed to obtain a contract printing Bibles for the University of Oxford.

Thomas Guy’s interest widened when he invested £45,500 in stock of the South Sea Company and made a vast profit from selling his stick for approximately £300 for every £50 he had originally paid.

In 1677 Guy subscribed handsomely towards new facilities at Tamworth’s free Grammar School where he had been educated as a boy. Guy soon followed up this gift to the town when he bought some ground in Gungate in Tamworth and built upon it six Alms Houses for six poor women, the cost of which was around £200. The building included a large room for a library to house the books of the Rev. John Rawletts. Guy also contributed a hefty sum for the building known as the Spinning School, which was used for children for their instruction and industrial training. Thomas Guy contributed his generosity to the townsfolk of Tamworth when in 1692; he enlarged the Alms Houses building so that men as well as women could be taken in, doubling the cost to him.

Thomas Guy’s first attempt to become MP for Parliament was unsuccessful and in 1690 he was badly beaten into third place behind Sir Henry Gough, BART, and Michael Biddulph Esquire. Guy’s second attempt for parliament in November 1695 was more successful. Thomas Guy was returned with Sir Henry Gough without opposition. Guy was to continue as MP for Tamworth until 1708. In the minutes of Tamworth Borough Council on 19th September 1700 reads as follows:

‘’Whereas our worthy benefactor Thomas Guy Esquire has declared that he at his own charge erect a new Towne Hall in the Market Place.’’

The building of the Town Hall was commenced in 1701 and completed in 1702.

Thomas Guy continued his benefaction to Tamworth and in 1702 was allowed to have a piece of waste ground at a moderate price on which to build several houses. In the following year a lease of two houses was granted to him at a cost of £7 per annum rent he intended to build on the site. In 1704 Guy was elected as a governor of St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. In 1707 in the elections for the following Parliament of Queen Anne in 1708, Thomas Guy was rejected by the electors of Tamworth. In a fit of rage Thomas Guy threatened to pull down the town hall he had built and to abolish the Alms Houses. The Burgesses, re-thinking their rash act, sent a deputation to see him in London with the offer of re-election in the next Parliament in 1710, but Guy rejected all conciliation saying that Tamworth had been ungrateful to him, considering what he had done for the town, and he deprived the inhabitants of Tamworth of the advantages of the Alms Houses.

In 1707 Guy started work on his greatest passion when he gave £1000 to the building of new wards at St. Thomas’s Hospital and also gave £100 a year to upkeep them, and later pent a further £3000 on the hospital. Thomas Guy intending to found and create a hospital for incurables in the close of this hospital in the parish of St. Thomas, was granted a lease. Work proceeded fairly rapidly and the building was roofed before Thomas Guy died on 27th December 1724.

The day before Thomas Guy died on Boxing Day 1724, he went to the building site to check up on the work being done. On returning home he complained about the bitter wind and how cold he was. The following morning his housekeeper Ann Gorton, finding Guy had not woken, went to his room and found Guy in a deep sleep from which he could not be woken. Thomas Guy was buried on 7th January 1925. There was more than 40 coaches to take the mourners to the funeral, many of them poor people, and many more flocked behind the cortege to pay tribute to a man who can be described as a friend and benefactor of the poor.

Thomas Guy never forgave Tamworth for the rejection he had suffered at their hands and shortly before his death, he excluded the inhabitants of the borough from participating from the benefits of his Alms House, restricting them to the people living in Wilnecote, Glascote, Bolehall, Amington, Wiggington and Hopwas. This restriction still applies in relation to the boundaries of the borough, as they existed in this day.