| Description | Letters from Josiah Wedgwood, from 1781 to 1792. The letters mainly concern business matters, such as steam engines, flint mills, shares in Cornish mines, and the like. The bundle also includes letters signed by Wedgwood’s sons John, Thomas and Josiah Jr., by his London agent Thomas Byerley, and by Peter Swift, Wedgwood’s cashier. Several of Wedgwood’s letters are in the hands of an amanuensis.
How Wedgwood’s letters were originally kept is unclear. The List of Contents of the Watt Room notes the presence of “three packets of Wedgwood and Wedgwood & Byerley,” while Hazleton’s scrapbook notes separate bundles of letters from Wedgwood and Wedgwood & Byerley. However by the time the collection was listed by the Library the letters were in two indistinct bundles covering 1781 to 1842 (Box 36/25) and 1800 to 1825 (Box 36/26). It was clear that letters from the various General Incoming Correspondence series had been added to the original contents of the Wedgwood bundles – indeed it is possible that the Wedgwood bundles were entirely created by Hazleton in the 1890s from items removed from the General Correspondence. The only letters that could be replaced with certainty were those from the 1829 to 1843 series, and these will now be found in 3/455, General Incoming Correspondence dealt with in the Drawing Office 1829-1843, W.
The Wedgwood letters are now arranged in two bundles. This first bundle contains letters written by or on behalf of Josiah. The second bundle covers the years 1794 to 1828, and contains business correspondence from the partnerships of Josiah Wedgwood Son & Byerley and Josiah Wedgwood & Byerley and from Josiah’s sons after his death in January 1795. |