Category Archives: Manuscripts

Legal compendium compiled by a magistrate summarizing statutes

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manuscript notebook

Pocket-sized manuscript legal compendium compiled by a Georgian magistrate around 1752, likely in Northamptonshire, as evinced by the sample legal forms included at the beginning. The main content of the volume is arranged under subject headings with references and extracts relating to relevant statutes: “Ale houses & ale house-keepers … Apprentices … Arrests … Assaults … Bakers … Brewers … Bricks & tiles … Bridges … Bail … Burglary … Butchers … Buttons … Callico & cambricks … Cloth & clothiers … Constables … Corn … Cottages & clergy … Counterfeiting … Deer & deerstalkers … Distillers … Dyers … Evidence & examination … Excise … Felony … Fish & fishing … Forcible entry … Game … Gaming … Gaols … Gun powder … Hawkers & pedlars …”

  • Title: Legal compendium compiled by a magistrate summarizing statutes by subject on matters relating to law and order : manuscript.
  • Production: Northamptonshire?, England, circa 1752?

Catalog Record

LWL Mss Vol. 277

Acquired June 2022

The mysterious mother, a tragedy

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handwritten title page

A manuscript copy, in an unidentified hand, of Horace Walpole’s tragedy. The text appears to follow the original 1768 edition, including the postscript and without the introduction.

  • Author: Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797, author.
  • Title: The mysterious mother, a tragedy : manuscript / by The Honble. Horace Walpole.
  • Production: England, late 18th century?

Catalog Record

LWL Mss Vol. 274

Acquired March 2022

Documents relating to a legal dispute between the overseers of the poor

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selection of printed sheets fanned out

A collection of ten documents concerning a dispute over which of two parishes in Derbyshire should be responsible for a pauper family. The family of Thomas Bottom, his wife Hannah, and their five children (Ann 12 years, Thomas 10 years, Sarah 7 years, Charles 4 years, and Lydia “aged abt 1/2 year”) had been adjudged by two local magistrates to be lawfully resident in Bradburn and therefore were the responsibility of the Overseers of that parish. The Bradburn Overseers, however, produced strong evidence to the contrary and were thus appealing the decision.

  • Title: Documents relating to a legal dispute between the overseers of the poor of the parishes of Bradburn and Kniveton, in Derbyshire : manuscript and printed text.
  • Production: Derbyshire, England, 1817.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss File 155+

Acquired May 2022

To the constables, tythingmen, and other his Majesty’s Peace Officers

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printed form with manuscript text

  • Title: To the constables, tythingmen, and other his Majesty’s Peace Officers of [blank] in the said county, for due execution and return therof. : You are hereby required in his Majesty’s name, forthwith to summon and warn [blank] to appear before me, or others of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace for the said county …
  • Publication: [Somerton, England] : [publisher not identified, [ca. 1809]
  • Manufacture: [Somerton, England] : Barrett, typ. Somerton, [ca. 1809]

Catalog Record

File 66 809 T627

Acquired October 2021

An inventory of all the household goods… &c. of the late Mr. Sandford

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handwritten inventory

A manuscript inventory in a single hand, written for probate purposes, lists the contents of the household of the late Mr. Sandford room by room, noting the assessed value of each item, a total for each room which is then carried over to the next page. The manuscript gives insight to the life of a middle class Englishman of the 1790s. The inventory starts with the attic and moves to the China Closet, Lumber Room, and Dining Room, followed by seven pages of books, listed by title. There are multiple parlours and small adjoining rooms, closets, a kitchen and brewhouse, gardens. The china, glass, plate, and linens are itemized, and the whole ends with jewelry, a portrait, and watch and chain. The total value of £413-16-2 attested to by Jno. Hodges and a second man Hill.

  • Title: An inventory of all the household goods, plate, china, glass, &c. of the late Mr. Sandford, taken 7th day Feby. 1793 : manuscript.
  • Production: England, 1793 February 7.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss vol. 267

Acquired July 2021

Margaret Emma Caldwell diaries

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manuscript notebook

Two diaries kept by Margaret Emma Caldwell, beginning at the age of 20, in which she records the books she read, contemporary events including the war wtih Napoleon, her social life, opinions and emotions, the people she encountered, and the historic events she lived through in the second decade of the nineteenth century.

  • Author: Caldwell, Margaret Emma, 1792-1830.
  • Title: Margaret Emma Caldwell diaries : manuscript.
  • Production: England, 1812-1820.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss vol. 268

William MacMurdo Duncan Scrapbook

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printed text - further description below

A scrapbook seemingly begun by William McMurdo Duncan in the 1790s, based on the earliest manuscript entry entitled “Books Belonging to William McMurdo Duncan 10th Feby. 1799” with later additions perhaps made by other members of his family, as the names of William’s wife Marianne and his daughter Helen are inscribed on the front endpaper. The scrapbook includes newspaper clippings and broadsides relating to the city of Liverpool; shipping and naval news; the Napoleonic Wars; reports of the royal families of England and France; local news stories tending to reports of dramatic accidents and crimes, including reports of the abuse of servants and presumanbly enslaved girls. Also included are two manuscript poems (1816) and a manuscript list of books. Also included is a printed form, completed in manuscript, from New College Manchester, dated “May 1st, 1797”, for a Norwegian student, “Mr. Kield Moestre” (1776-1805), which gives his grades for two months (“March & April”) of lectures in the subjects of languages, mathematics, and natural philosophy. A page from the Observer (no. 1249) from 29 October 1815 includes a large woodcut “Island of Saint Helena” with “A descriptive sketch of the Island of Saint Helena”. Clippings from a column “Cabinet”. Laid in the front are over two dozen clippings from the column “Cabinet” that provide spiritual advice about conduct of life and marriage and other religious topics dated from the 1830s.

  • Creator: Duncan, William MacMurdo, 1772-1853.
  • Title: William MacMurdo Duncan Scrapbook : printed text and manuscript.
  • Production: Liverpool?, England, circa 1795-1816.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss vol. 270

Acquired October 2021

Field notebook

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manuscript notebook

Manuscript, with entries overwritten multiple times in multiple hands, records farms and parcels of land between Bradford and Harrogate, now in West Yorkshire, relating at least in part to lands owned by Francis Lindley Wood, 2nd baronet (1771-1846). It opens with an alphabetical list of tenants’ names, then follows with a series of sketches of the corresponding farms and fields, with annotations and owner’s names. Among the thirty small plans and illustrations, most of which depict unidentified farming settlements, is a colored sketch of the country house and estate of Bolling (or Bowling) Hall, with the owner John Sturges’s name written beside it. At the end of the book are ten further pages of farming notes, including treatment for cattle, the last dated 1859.

  • Title: Field notebook : manuscript.
  • Production: Yorkshire, England, 1816-1859.

Catalog Record

LWL Mss vol. 263

Acquired June 2021