According to long-accepted, though unverifiable anecdote, the idea for the first charitable fund for musicians was born when three London players had just exited a popular coffee house in the Haymarket in 1738 and saw two young boys driving donkeys up the street. There would have been nothing particularly noteworthy about the scene, except for the fact that the three musicians recognized the boys as the sons of Jean Christian Kytch, a well-respected oboist who had played bassoon in the premier of Handel’s first London opera, Rinaldo, back in 1711. A Dutch emigrant, Kytch had died earlier in 1738 and his survivors quickly found themselves in desperate straits, as the sight of his boys in the Haymarket brought home to his musical colleagues as they stood in front of the Orange Coffee House.
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