Croydon University Hospital: foundation plaque

Image: © Christopher Hilton Taken: 2 Nov 2012

Croydon University Hospital (previously the Mayday Hospital) was founded as Croydon Union Infirmary, a Poor Law institution. This foundation plaque is on the ground floor corridor of the original nineteenth-century building, now the Woodcroft Wing. In the list of ex-officio Guardians, one can see where a name has been cut out above Edmund Byron and replaced by a blank strip of marble. This marks the name of Jabez Balfour, who was a Justice of the Peace and ex-officio Guardian in 1883. He was a non-conformist Liberal politician (for a while, member of Parliament for Tamworth), temperance advocate and founder of a chain of interlocking banks and building societies. In 1892 it was revealed that his Liberator Building Society managed to pay high rates of interest only by paying out capital deposited by more recent customers - in other words, that it was a pyramid or Ponzi scheme - and Balfour fled to Argentina, later returning to serve a period of imprisonment. Clearly after this it was felt that he should be expunged from the historical record and his name cut out of the foundation plaque.

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