Blog post written by Mark Iten (24 April 2020)
On this day, April 24th, in the years 1806, 1826 and 1827, three short letters had been written and sent out; all differing in content and location, as well as authors and recipients. While all these letters are somewhat related to issues within the lower social orders, they provide an overview of the diversity within the types of letters contained in the LALP corpus.
First, on April 24th 1809, “Loving Husband” Thomas Atkins sent a personal letter from Brentford in the historic county of Middlesex to his wife, likely located in Blandford Forum, Dorset, where the letter eventually ended up. In his letter, Atkins explains how he had heard about his wife’s illness, saying that he will pray for her and that she should “send [him] Letter Soon you can to let [him] how be”. While this letter does not share a direct link with monetary issues, it provides us with some insight into personal issues between a husband and a wife, separated due to the husband’s work, and gives us an idea of how rather informal letters within related parties might have generally looked like at the time.
17 years later, on April 24th 1826, Jane Wildmay sent a letter from London to the “Gentelmen” at her home parish of Wooburn, Buckinghamshire. In the letter, Wildmay asks “if [the Gentelmen’s] goodness will assist [Wildmay’s three daughters,] the will be very thankfull the Money that I recived from you Neerley all went to Pay [Wildmay’s] rent”. Earlier in the letter, the petitioner explained how the “traid” as Silk Winders “is so bad the have not aney thing to do”. Because of this, Wildmay’s pay had been stopped entirely at her new parish in London, while her daughters are in need of monetary assistance by the home parish in Buckinghamshire.
Finally, on the same day in 1827, JH Rose wrote a letter to Mr Smith in the parish of Lyndhurst, Hampshire, on behalf of John Norris. According to Rose, Norris had complained to her “that he [was] starving & [could] obtain neither work, or relief”, which apparently had happened once before and had turned out that instead, he had been refusing to do work that had been offered to him. Because of this, Rose “[could] not believe him” and asked Mr Smith for clarification before writing another petition for relief on behalf of Norris.
As mentioned before, these three letters alone already show how variable the content of the letters within the LALP corpus is, thus shedding more light on some of the personal issues the working class people in the Late Modern English period were faced with.