| Description | General correspondence from persons whose surnames begin with T, from 1785 to 1795. 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 sometimes a one-line summary of the letter. A large number of the dockets are in Watt’s hand, but a few are by Boulton, and others are by various clerks at Soho. There are also some dockets in John Southern’s hand, and these letters may have originally been kept with the other letters dealt with by Southern.
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. Some items were moved because they related to letters elsewhere in the series, and other letters were taken out of the series altogether and placed elsewhere in the collection. 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. |