Robert Hunter (National Trust) preserve them for the nation. At Hunter's suggestion it was entitled "the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty", generally known simply as "the National Trust". Hunter was the founding chairman of the trust's executive board. From 1882 until the year of his death Hunter was solicitor to the General Post Office. His negotiations in that capacity were estimated to have saved the British taxpayer many millions of pounds. Hunter was born in the south London suburb of Camberwell, the elder child and only son of Robert Lachlan Hunter, a master mariner and shipowner, and his wife,
Octavia Hill Hospital in the East End inspired Octavia Hill's concern for the poorest in early Victorian London. She received no formal schooling: her mother educated the family at home. The family settled in a small cottage in Finchley, now a north London suburb, but then a village. Octavia Hill was impressed and moved by Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor", a book that portrayed the daily lives of slum dwellers. She was also strongly influenced by the theologian, Anglican priest and social reformer F. D. Maurice, who was a family friend. She began her work on behalf of London's