alms box

HISTORY Alms box used to collect coins in Newgate prison from 1400 to 1893 CHARACTER Tommy Ferens, who lived in poverty and used to stand half way across the Swing Bridge to avoid being arrested GOOD DEEDS Elise Bath, a student curator, with an alms dish used in Whitburn Street chapel in the 1800s; right, Alison Kay, founder of the People's Kitchen in 1988

THE name "Boxing Day" was created in the Middle Ages, when an Alms Box was traditionally placed in every church on Christmas Day, into which worshippers placed a gift for the poor of the parish.

The old alms box was taken from St Peter's and St Paul's Church at Monksbridge, in Butlers Marston, near Warwick, on Saturday.

For this reason Charity stood on the ground floor newel with an alms box for donations from passers-by.

They also threatened to stop contributing to the alms box if they were not allowed to attend services." [26]

On display is the alms box used at Newcastle's Newgate Prison from 1400-1823.

Canon Christopher Samuels, of St Mary's,in Handbridge, Chester, received an anonymous telephone call from a woman claiming she had left the jewellery in an alms box.

But 'box' becoming 'boxing' seems much more unlikely to me, even if it is an alms box that could make a poor man very happy.

The contents of this alms box originated with the ordinary folks in the parish who were under no direct obligation to provide anything at all and were certainly not tied to the recipients by a employer-employee relationship.

As with anything old, it is surrounded in myth, but is said to have started in the Middle Ages when alms boxes, into which parishioners put donations to the poor, were opened and the cash distributed the day after Christmas.