Nelson & His World

Discussion on the life and times of Admiral Lord Nelson
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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 4:05 pm 
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Yes, I think the usual practice in Nelson's day was to fold the letter and use the reverse side to add the addressee's name and address. If members of the House of Lords signed and dated an address panel then there was no cost. This was called a 'free front', I believe. I have a letter written by Lady Hamilton but the address panel and date are in Nelson's hand:

Merton twentieth November 1801
Captain Sutton
HMS Amazon
Deal
Kent

and he has written 'Nelson & Bronte'in the bottom left hand corner. There is a seal tear, small perforations and traces of red from the opened seal - presumably Nelson's, not Emma's, since he had written the address panel.

The paper is foolscap size, (15 in x 9) folded in half to 71/2 x 9, then folded again, sides together, then top and bottom, then sealed. The address panel measures 3 in x 5 in.

If I recall correctly, the young Emma was able to write to Greville to seek his help when she was abandoned by Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh because Greville had supplied her with a 'free front' - presumably a sheet of foolscap signed and addressed to him at his address. Penniless as she was, she was still able to contact him. Greville, of course, was not a lord, though he was an earl's son. I'm not sure whether the privilege of free fronts extended to the sons of noblemen or whether he had to pre-pay in some way. Before the penny post, the recipient paid the cost of postage; but maybe there was some way for the sender to pay in advance.

Oh! Maybe Emma's fingerprints and Nelson's are on this letter!! What a thought! If there's a trace of Emma's DNA, Mark, we could settle the question of Horatia's parentage by comparing it with a sample from Anna tribe or her family!! Mustn't go off topic........

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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 7:47 pm 
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Hi Anna

I'm liking the idea of DNA from Emma's fingerprint. I will file that in my memory bank to be used at a later date. LOL!

Thanks for confirming the folding and sealing of correspondence rather than using an envelope. I have a feeling that might have the norm but didn't want to say in case I might have been exaggerating.

You are certainly right that the peer himself had to write the address panel and in a VERY precise way as regards content, positioning etc.

Somewhat similar to your own letter I have seen a letter written by Sir William Hamilton and addressed by Nelson. That must have been because SWH had used up his own quota.

I'm not sure about Greville being able to use the system. Somewhere in a file here I have an article I found in a magazine about this system and how it worked. If I can pull it out I'll see if it throws any light.

By the way I think it was "free frank" as opposed to "free front."

Mark


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:16 pm 
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Thanks for all that info about the sealing process. I never even realised that envelopes that we know did not come in until many years afterwards. I am attaching the actual Pill Box that has always contained the Seal.


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 10:30 pm 
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I wonder at what date and from whom did the British Library get their copy of the seal ? I have the ref no in the letter that Dr Arnold Hunt sent to me. I am starting to think that there cannot be many copies of this as its not at Greenwich or Portsmouth or the Nelson Museum . I have sent copies to people and museums as I think it's so fascinating and its a shame not to share this object.


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 9:00 am 
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Mark:

Mrs Nit-Picky here! The manuscript dealer Julian Browning refers to 'free fronts' on his website:


http://www.historicalautographs.co.uk/search.asp

I think 'free frank' refers to the actual franking mark.

As you will see, all these items are folded to pretty well the same size - roughly 3 in x 5 in so there was clearly a proper way to fold and seal.

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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Fri Jul 31, 2015 10:19 am 
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Hi Anna

I guess I have always referred to it as the free frank system. But no probs.

It occurred to me that Charles Greville was an MP at one time wasn't he? I believe MPs were allowed to use the system too. If it is the right time frame then that might answer how he was able to give Emma a pre-addressed sheet for her to write to him.

Mark


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Tue Aug 04, 2015 11:58 pm 
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Whilst trying to do a bit of research into James Hartley Dathan I know that he was employed in the Impress Office at Hartlepool from Aug 1803
I found a site about Nelson and his band of brothers . James Watson served alongside Nelson . Then he was at Hartlepool at the same time as Dathan organising the Sea Fencibles until May 1804. Is this when he maybe gave the copy of the seal to Dathan . All really just guessing on my part . But the bit about the Sea Fencibles is interesting !

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=fyo ... vy&f=false

http://www.rmg.co.uk/explore/sea-and-sh ... -fencibles


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Wed Aug 05, 2015 10:38 am 
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Dathan was sent to North Shields . This may have been a different office to Hartlepool so just guessing at who got the seal ! Anyone got any ideas ?


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal and Envelopes
PostPosted: Sun Aug 09, 2015 9:54 pm 
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Mark and Steve

The use of envelopes as we understand them (ie special paper containers capable of being glued shut and containing a separate written communication) would certainly have been the exception rather that the rule at this time. Post Office regulations were extremely complicated, but before the Rowland Hill reforms of the 1840s introduced the idea of charging letters by weight, postal services were based on the principle of charging by the sheet. These, as has been said, were written on one side then folded and sealed in such a manner that the address could be written on the outside face. It was actually possible to buy prepaid sheets although most people preferred the pay-on-receipt system.

The result was that the writing in these letters was often miniscule (or indeed had a second message written confusingly across the first) to get as much as possible onto a single sheet. Sometimes letters were left blank on the inside. This was when the correspondents were operating a kind of postal fraud. What would happen (for example) is that they would agree in advance that a blank sheet meant that all was well and the family were prosperous in good health. The recipient would then receive the letter, open it, register the coded good news, then refuse to accept the letter and pay the charge. Another trick was to underline words in newspapers which were carried free of charge.

Distance traveled was also taken into account, and the cost of postage was accordingly expensive. It cost 3 pence to send a single sheet up to fifteen miles, more for greater distances, and 6 pence for double sheets. A fancy envelope would have counted as an extra sheet and was thus rarely used. Foreign letters were of course prohibitively expensive. To send a single sheet letter in 1811 by Packet to Sweden was 2/4d and to Brazil 3/5d.

Inevitably many of the upper echelons of society – MP’s peers and public officials – were exempted from these charges and could send letters free either by endorsing them with their name or ‘franking’ them. There was also a remarkable exception in that people in London and a few other populous towns could send letter within the city limits for one penny. In 1795, this penny post privilege was deliberately extended to cover NCOs, Petty Officers, seamen and private soldiers when on active service as long as their commanding officers countersigned the cover. This pleased the men and their wives but worried the officers who were convinced - at this time at any rate, on the cusp of the great mutinies - that more letters were sent with seditious intent than containing cheerful family greetings.

PO regulations laid down specifically that private correspondence was never to be opened (though it was notorious that some was – as Nelson once remarked) but attempts were made by senders to ensure that the sheets remained as secure as possible, and the use of heavy embossed wax seals by those who could afford them was common – which brings us back to square one!

Brian


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:42 pm 
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Brian

Thanks for all the info and for taking the time to help on this . As the letter was folded and then sealed you would have thought that the seal would have been ripped up and broken .Otherwise what was the point of the seal .The other time that the seal would have been used was on an official document or bill maybe ?
Its so annoying not being able to get some sort of evidence as to who got hold of it ?

Bawden family or Dathan family ?

The mums side or the dads both have extensive nautical backgrounds. ? Can anyone find anymore on this ?

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Naval_ ... es_Hartley


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 7:31 am 
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I’m not sure about that Steve. Georgian Britain was not a throw-away society and letters were much rarer and more precious than today. Naval letters in particular were clearly carefully composed and often comprehensive (since they by the nature of things were infrequent and the writers didn’t known when – or if – they would have the next opportunity to write). When talking about significant events, some were clearly written to be read aloud to others (and were, in inns etc). And many of course were kept – hence the mass of personal correspondence that survives and which forms such a vital part of historical research. Likewise, wives would often have a letter being written ‘on the go’ as it were for a long time, since news that a ship carrying mail was heading for their husband’s location was often sudden and they would only have enough time to scribble a final greeting.
Thus letters between the better off, and probably people of the ‘middling sort’ as they were called, were not, I think, ‘ripped open’ as you imply, but would have been open with great care with the seal carefully lifted. The fact that the quality of the paper was often very good meant that many did survive in good condition (in site of the fact that the ink had a n acid bas and, over time, ate into it.)

Brian


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamilton's Seal and Cdr Dathan
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:53 am 
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Steve

On a related matter, I fear that you are unlikely to get much joy from tracing the Dathan connection. James Hartley Dathan is the only person with that surname ever to appear in the Navy List and his career (or lack of it) shows he was a man of modest origin who lacked the qualities needed for promotion – that is, either luck in battle or influential fiends or relations to push his career. At a time when the ‘regulation’ minimum time for service as a midshipman before promotion to lieutenant was 6 years, the fact that he needed 18 years to make it speaks volumes – as does the fact that he was never promoted again. His nominal rank of Commander was not a real one – in 1841 the Admiralty, in order to reduce the enormous number of elderly lieutenants clogging up the system, offered the oldest the ‘token’ rank (though real half pay) of commander as long as they formally retired. It was, as they say in the mafia ‘an offer he (and people like Dathan) couldn’t refuse'!

Brian


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal and Datham
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 11:13 am 
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Humble pie Steve. I should have said there were no Datham's on the Navy List during most of the 19th century.

Brian


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal
PostPosted: Mon Aug 10, 2015 10:11 pm 
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Just extending the subject of letters a bit further.

I feel I should know about this but I don't really. i.e. how did the system of "letter books" work on board ships.

Am I right that all official correspondence both in and out was transcribed into letter books?

If so what happened to the originals of inbound letters?

Likewise what happened to the letter books? Were they returned to the Admiralty?

Thanks if someone can give me a rudimentary understanding of how the system worked. :)

Mark


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 Post subject: Re: Lady Hamiltons Seal; Ship's Letter Books
PostPosted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:55 am 
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Mark

I am sure that you will know much of what follows, but I give it for the sake of others less familiar with the set up.
The administration required of the captain of a ship of war – and of his departmental heads – was so formidable one wonders how they ever had time to fight. There were muster books, log books, pay books, journals, ticket books, slop books, sick books and bounty books to be kept and submitted at regular intervals and innumerable forms, dockets, chits, affidavits, certificates and vouchers which had to be completed whenever any activity was undertaken involving expenditure on the ship, the crew, the stores, the guns, the sick, victuals, supernumeraries and prisoners.
To make life easier and ensure uniformity, the Admiralty supplied blank printed versions of all these documents which could be completed in ink. There were specific instructions as to when each had to be submitted to the Admiralty - weekly, monthly, two monthly or at the conclusion of a voyage.

The most comprehensive list of all this paperwork is in a 1794 book-cum-instruction manual with vast appendices of printed forms and books by Robert Liddell entitled
THE SEAMAN’S NEW VADE MECUM - CONTAINING A PRACTICAL ESSAY - ON - NAVAL BOOK-KEEPING - WITH THE - Method of Keeping the Captain’s Books - AND - COMPLETE INSTRUCTIONS - IN THE - DUTY OF YHE CAPTAIN’S CLERK
On page 2 of his introductory instructions says.

“The Captain fhould alfo have an Order Book and a Letter Book, in the Order Book fhould be entered Copies of all Orders which the Captain may at any Time give to junior Captains or other officers, with Particular care as to the wording, and Dates of fuch Orders, and in the Letter Book fhould be entered Copies of all letters which the Captain may at any Time fend upon His Majesty’s service.”

Nothing else is said. No ‘standard’ pro-forma is given, and here are no instructions about submitting these Books to the Admiralty. Likewise nothing is said about in-coming orders and letters. However, I have no doubt that the Captain and his Clerk would have kept similar Order and Letter Books for incoming correspondence as well. The reason these are not mentioned in the instructions (including Liddell’s) is, I think, because -

a) the bulk of naval documents, forms, vouchers etc were about expenditure or had financial implications; and were described in vast detail in order to control spending and to prevent waste. Little attention was given to a thing that was simply a useful administrative device with no financial purpose, like an Order Book or a Letter Book.

b) Liddell’s instructions (and official regulations) are headquarters-orientated. In other words, they laid down exactly what the Admiralty and its Boards wanted to receive from the captain in a standardised form that would enable them to cope with the avalanche of paper pouring in from hundreds of ships at sea. They were little concerned with what might be useful to the captain.
It is not surprising that a non-financial document which is only useful to captains like an In-Letter Book is therefore either forgotten or unmentioned.

What happened to the Letter Books? Good question. The only entries under ‘Letter Books’ I have seen in the TNA catalogues are for the correspondence of London departments, overseas naval bases etc (ie institutions not individuals like captains). The collections of Personal Papers in the NMM on the other hand, frequently include the Letter and Order Books of the individuals concerned. From this, my guess is that at the end of a voyage, officialdom was not much interested in these Books which (if they were handed over with the mass of material which was required) were put aside and eventually ‘weeded’; or else the captains themselves kept them a personal records and mementoes.

Brian


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