prominent Freemason". In June 1895 Peek had saved the life of a young French girl who jumped overboard from a ferry midway between Dinard and St Malo in Brittany and was awarded the bronze medal of the Royal Humane Society and the Gold Medal 1st Class of the Sociâetâe Nationale de Sauvetage de France. In November 1898 a memorial service was held at St Magnus for Sir Stuart Knill (1824–1898), head of the firm of John Knill and Co, wharfingers, and formerly Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company. This was the first such service for a Roman Catholic taken in an Anglican church. Sir Stuart's son, Sir John Knill (1856–1934), also served as Alderman for the Ward of Bridge Within, Lord Mayor and Master of the Plumbers' Company. Until 1922 the annual Fish Harvest Festival was celebrated at St Magnus. The service moved in 1923 to St Dunstan in the East and then to St Mary at Hill, but St Magnus retained close links with the local fish merchants until the closure of old Billingsgate Market. St Magnus, in the 1950s, was "buried in the stink of Billingsgate fish-market, against which incense was a welcome antidote". A report in 1920 from a committee chaired by Lord Phillimore proposed the demolition of nineteen City churches, including St Magnus. A general outcry from members of the public and parishioners alike prevented the execution of this plan. The members of the City Livery Club passed a resolution that they regarded "with horror and indignation the proposed demolition of 19 City churches" and pledged the club to do everything in its power to prevent such a catastrophe. T. S. Eliot wrote that the threatened churches gave "to the business quarter of London a beauty which its hideous banks and commercial houses have not quite defaced. ... the least precious redeems some vulgar street ... The loss of these towers, to meet the eye down a grimy lane, and of these empty naves, to receive the solitary visitor at noon from the dust and tumult of Lombard Street, will be irreparable and unforgotten." The London County Council published a report concluding that St Magnus was "one of the most beautiful of all Wren's works" and "certainly one of the churches which should not be demolished without specially good reasons and after very full consideration." Due to the uncertainty about the church's future, the