| Description | General correspondence from persons whose surnames begin with H, from 1775 to 1785. The bundles of General Correspondence contain letters from engine customers, carriers who were transporting parts for Boulton & Watt, firms to whom Boulton & Watt subcontracted work, engine erectors, and people making general enquiries about engines. There are also occasional memoranda and accounts. Several references to the sale of copying presses will also be found in these letters.
How these letters were originally kept, and when they were put into the existing alphabetical arrangement, is not known. The letters are usually docketed with the correspondent’s name, where they were writing from, and the date, and very occasionally a one-line summary of the letter. A large number of the dockets are in Watt’s hand, but some are by Boulton, and others are by various clerks at Soho. It would appear that some of the earliest letters from the 1770s were originally kept with Matthew Boulton’s own correspondence, and removed to the engine firm’s records at a later date.
The firm almost certainly kept their correspondence in alphabetical bundles, judging by evidence of the original order of other bundles of correspondence in the Soho collections. However under the custody of Henry Hazleton at Soho Foundry, George Tangye and ultimately the Library, the arrangement became disrupted. Large runs of letters from the same correspondent, for example Joseph Rathbone & Co. (the Coalbrookdale Co.) were separated, some items were moved because they related to letters elsewhere in series, and other letters were taken out of the series altogether. The letters have now been arranged according to the dockets, which would appear to be true at least to the spirit of Boulton & Watt’s arrangement, if not replicating it exactly.
Very few of the dockets give summaries of the contents. Therefore the majority of the letters have been summarised. |