The Beggar's Benison - Legacy

Legacy

The club was dissolved in 1836; some of its papers and relics were retained by one of the last members, Matthew Foster Connolly, burgh clerk of Anstruther Easter and Wester, who left them to his son-in-law the Reverend Dr J.F.S. Gordon. The remaining club money was bequeathed to fund prizes for girls at school in East Anstruther. In 1892 an unknown author published Records of the Most Ancient and Puissant Order of the Beggar's Benison and Merryland, Anstruther with photographs of many of the relics. This work was reprinted in 1982 in the Gems of British Social History Series. There was an attempt by army officer Maxwell Robert Canch Kavanagh to revive the club in 1921. Most of the relics of the club, including objects with phallic decorations, are now held in the Beggar's Benison and Wig Club collection of the University of St Andrews. In 2002 David Stevenson, emeritus professor of history at the University of St Andrews, published a scholarly book on the Beggar's Benison.