THE BRITISH BALL

The British Ball is the evening of St. George’s Society of New York, held in April as near to St. George’s Day as the calendar allows.

It is black tie, it is British, and it pays for a charity older than the United States.

The Society

On St. George’s Day 1770 a group of Englishmen met in a tavern on Pearl Street, the building now called Fraunces Tavern, and formed a society to aid their brethren in distress. The city already had such a society for its Scots. The English had assumed they would not need one, and found that they did: men arrived with expectations New York did not meet, and had nowhere to turn when it failed them.

Six years later the colony declared its independence. Some of the Society’s members sailed home, some went north to Nova Scotia, and some stayed, and the ones who stayed kept it going. Thirteen years after the founding dinner, Washington took leave of his officers in the same building.

What it did afterward followed what the English in New York needed. It bought coal for families through the winters, kept free beds at St. Luke’s Hospital, paid the passage home for those the city had not worked out for, and found work for the unemployed through the Depression. The needs have changed since, and the Society with them.

The Evening

For most of its modern life it was called the English Ball. The name is now the British Ball, and the room is British, American and much of the Commonwealth besides.

The Society presents its Medal of Honor during the evening, to someone who has served the ties between the two countries.

There is an auction, with paddles, and it is where the evening’s money is made. Then dinner, and then the dancing, which goes late.

What to Know

St. George’s Day is the twenty-third of April. The ball keeps as close to it as it can.

It is a good evening for a member who does business across the Atlantic. The room is full of people who do.

New York keeps other societies of the same age and purpose, St. Andrew’s for the Scots and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick for the Irish, and each has its own evening.

Black tie.

The Court

The British Ball is not the Court’s own. Places at a table, or a table for members together, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the evening around it: a car there and back, and a table afterward for those who want the night to go on.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.