| Description | Elizabeth Taylor Cadbury sent this letter to her eldest son Laurence John Cadbury and his wife Joyce enclosing a number of daguerreotypes of Laurence's father, her late husband George Cadbury, which she had recently received from Arnold Rowntree. A photograph of one of the daguerreotypes, dated 1857, accompanies the letter showing George Cadbury and a group of other young men during his business apprenticeship with the Rowntrees, a Quaker manufacturing family who ran a grocery business in York. Taylor Cadbury writes:
'In those days Friends being debarred from the Universities it was the custom for parents to send their sons on leaving school to some well known firm for a year or so, in order to study business methods.'
Taylor Cadbury also notes that she had recently found a number of letters written to her husband George Cadbury by his family whilst he was staying in York, adding that the letters were sent to encourage her husband who was 'not very happy'. In addition, she refers to a letter written to George Cadbury by Arnold Rowntree's father shortly after he returned to Birmingham advising him 'as to attitude towards life and future work'.
The photograph accompanying this letter shows S. Wedmore, G. Gillett, Richard Tatham, J. S. Neave, Joseph Pelvin, Lewis Fry, Thomas Clark and George Cadbury. |