BIB_ID
102711
Accession number
MA 1352.640
Creator
Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn, 1810-1865.
Display Date
Manchester, England, 1850 January 8.
Credit line
Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, 1951.
Description
1 item (6 pages) ; 17.5 x 11.1 cm
Notes
The letter is part of a collection, MA 1352, which consists of letters from Charles Dickens to the Baroness, to her companion Hannah (Meredith) Brown, or the latter's husband, William Brown; with ten letters written by Catherine Dickens to Angela Burdett Coutts and 73 letters written by others to Miss Coutts or to Dickens in his capacity as her unofficial almoner. See the collection-level record for more information.
Written from "121. Upper Rumford Street / Manchester / Jan'y 8."
Year of writing from Dickens' letter to Miss Coutts dated January 10, 1850 referring to his reply to this letter (See MA 1352.184). Dickens' reply to this letter, saying he cannot help her, is published, as cited below, in The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 6, with a reference to this letter in footnote 4 on p. 6.
Written from "121. Upper Rumford Street / Manchester / Jan'y 8."
Year of writing from Dickens' letter to Miss Coutts dated January 10, 1850 referring to his reply to this letter (See MA 1352.184). Dickens' reply to this letter, saying he cannot help her, is published, as cited below, in The Letters of Charles Dickens, Vol. 6, with a reference to this letter in footnote 4 on p. 6.
Provenance
The letters formed part of the Burdett-Coutts sale (Sotheby, 17 May 1922); they were purchased for Oliver W. Barrett in whose collection they remained until it was sold by his son (Parke-Bernet, 31 October 1951).
Summary
Asking for help in securing emigration for a young prisoner at New Bayley Prison who wishes to emigrate to Australia; explaining, in detail, the circumstances of the life a young girl named Pasley; asking if this young woman might emigrate on one of the ships that the Home uses to send out its inmates; saying "..the account of common emigrant ships is so bad one would not like to expose her to such chances of corruption; and what I want you to tell me is, how Miss Coutts sends out her protegees? under the charge of a matron? and might she be included among them? I want her to go out with as free and unbranded a character as she can; if possible, the very fact of her having been in prison &c to be unknown on her landing. I will try and procure her friends when she arrives; only, how am I to manage about the voyage? and how soon will a creditable ship sail; for she comes out of prison on Wednesday & there are two of the worst women in the town who have been in prison with her, intending to way-lay her, and I want to keep her out of all temptation, and even chance of recognition. Please will you help me? I think you know Miss Coutts. I can manage all except the voyage. She is a good reader, writer, and a beautiful needle-woman; and we can pay all her expenses &c. Pray don't say you can't help me for I don't know any one else to ask, and you see the message you sent about emigration some years ago has been the mother of all this mischief;" relating, in a postscript, the seduction of Pasley by the assistant surgeon at the prison, his dismissal and the agreement by the Chaplain of the prison to attest to the truth of the incident.
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