| Description | According to his own Inventory, when Cheshire left Soho on 15 Feb. 1812 he placed the contents of this file in his Box No. 5 under the title “Letters & Copies, 1798 a 1801.” Under M. R. Boulton’s later arrangement they were put into Box D. III.
While the Matthew Boulton Papers were in the custody of the Assay Office, most of the contents of this file were scattered (see the list of Old References), and thus the original arrangement has been obscured; indeed, it is not clear whether the correspondence for these years formed a single file, or whether, perhaps, the title above covered several separate files, one for each year. Following the pattern of the later files, the documents are now arranged as four files, as follows:
6/127. 1–4. Letters and Copies, 1798.
6/128. 1-40. Letters and Copies, 1799.
6/129. 1-27. Letters and Copies, 1800.
6/130. 1-24. Letters and Copies, 1801.
Within these files, the documents have now been grouped alphabetically by the first letter of the correspondent’s name, and are arranged in chronological order within these groups.
Note on Arrangement.
The letter from Richard Chippindall, 10 Jun. 1799, was apparently added by the Assay Office to Matthew Boulton’s Chippindall file, though according to the docket it originally was filed under the name “Green & Ward.” It is possible that this document does not belong here, but with Matthew Boulton’s General Correspondence; but it is more likely that it was merely taken over with the letter from Chippindall to Cheshire, 7 Feb., particularly as the two appear one after the other in the Assay Office’s Catalogue.
The placing of the letter from James Alston of 3 Jun. is also speculative.
The letter from James Lassetter [Birmingham] to William Cheshire [Soho]. 12 Dec. 1799, is on the same sheet as the letter from William Cheshire to Thomas Sherratt of the same date. The sheet is docketed ‘Sheratt’ and it is therefore filed under S.
The copy letters are all press-copies, except where otherwise stated. |