The Worshipful Company of Haberdashers is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. The organisation, which developed from the Mercers' Company, another Livery Company connected with clothing, received a Royal Charter in 1448. The Company, which was originally responsible for the regulation cloth merchants, began to lose control due to the increase of the population of London, its jurisdiction. Thus, the Company now exists as an educational and charitable institution only, instead of retaining links to its original trade.

As an educational institution, the Haberdashers' company has been active in founding nine schools, which. It created a boys' school at Hoxton, which then split into schools at Hatcham in south London and Hampstead in north London; the Hampstead school moved in 1961 to become the Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School, Elstree. The Hatcham school now admits girls as well as boys; a separate girls' school was founded at Acton but has now moved to be close to the Elstree school. Other Haberdashers' schools are situated elsewhere in the U.K., for example Adams' Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire. Being a principally Christian organisation, the Haberdashers present copies of the King James Bible to leavers of their schools.

The Company ranks eighth in the order of precedence of Livery Companies; it is therefore considered one of the "Great Twelve City Livery Companies". The Company's motto is Serve and Obey.

See Also

• Haberdasher

External link

• The Haberdashers' Company (http://www.haberdashers.co.uk/)