| Description | 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 and the “pneumatic apparatus” invented by James Watt will also be found in these letters.
How these letters were originally kept, and when they were put into the alphabetical arrangement, is not known. Nor is any reason apparent as to why this series covers a shorter number of years than the two preceeding series, which cover 1775-1785 and 1785-1795 respectively. The letters are usually docketed with the correspondent’s name, where they were writing from, and the date, and usually a short summary of the letter. The majority of the dockets in the 1795-1798 series are in the hands of the younger members of the firm – James Watt Jr., Gregory Watt and Matthew Robinson Boulton. Some are in the hands of clerks at Soho such as James Pearson. 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. Other letters were added in from locations that are now unknown. The 1795-1798 series suffered particularly badly from this, and there is evidence throughout the series both of letters having been added from elsewhere, and of items having been removed which are now missing. Also large numbers of letters which appear to have originally been part of this series were found scattered throughout the collection; these have been added in. Given this disruption, the order of these bundles should be taken only as an approximation to Boulton & Watt’s order, but one which is at least to the spirit of that original arrangement. |