A woman's missionary and domestic record,
The first manuscript page is a chart recording activities across five infirmary wards, dated October 18, [1867], to February 18, 1868. Each line records the number of men in each ward and her acts of service, mainly reading the Bible aloud or just "left tracts". A later 10 pages dated Marc...
| Format: | Manuscript |
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| Language: | English |
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| Summary: | The first manuscript page is a chart recording activities across five infirmary wards, dated October 18, [1867], to February 18, 1868. Each line records the number of men in each ward and her acts of service, mainly reading the Bible aloud or just "left tracts". A later 10 pages dated March 1872 through November 1878 record "facts connected with my work as [L.?] missionary collector," likely referring to her efforts on behalf of the London Missionary Society or the Church Missionary Society. In these entries she notes the outcomes of her appeals to other affluent women for donations, some declined, others gave to different causes like the S.P.G. (Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts), and many simply offered their good wishes. Interspersed throughout are handwritten recipes, including for lemon syrup, plum pudding, gooseberry pie, oatmeal biscuits, seed cake, Cornish pasties, fermented bread. Also a wide range of medicinal and domestic preparations: remedies for cough, diphtheria, whooping cough, chilblains, and sleeplessness; formulas to remove vermin from old houses; and instructions for cleaning white marble. The compiler's religious devotion is reflected in her inclusion of moral verses and copied texts, such as an epitaph from Old Mother Shipton's Tomb in Clifton Yard, Yorkshire, and the poem 'One more in Heaven' by Marian Farningham. 9 laid-in sheets continue this pattern (plus a remnant of fabric "bit of darling little Lawrence's tie-ups. Sent May 13th '91" and a debit receipt from London & County Banking Company, dated 9/8/1892), forming a portrait of a charitable, devout woman and her domestic life in mid-19th-century England. |
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| Item Description: | Title devised by bookseller. 34 pages of ink manuscript text in a lined notebook. Mostly blank pages and several pages cut out. Additional handwritten notes laid-in. Newspaper clipping about the activities of the Mayor of Ipswich is from the Ipswich journal [1854?]. |
| Physical Description: | 1 volume (unpaged) ; 20 cm + 9 additional items + 1 newspaper clipping. |