Single Letter

HAM/1/7/5/13

Letter from Sophia Fielding (née Finch) to an unidentified 'Madam'

Diplomatic Text


Dear Madam
      I am very anxious to know how Miʃs
Hamilton
does after the Shock that I'm afraid
the news of Mrs. Thursby's Death[1] must have
given her & take the liberty to trouble you
with all our Enquiries after her as I think a
note might only distreʃs her if her Spirits
are agitated -- I have so bad a Cold at present
that I fear it will be hardly poʃsible for me
to call on her as I hoped to have done either
today or Monday but we all long to know
how She is & I hope you will excuse my
detaining you so long & am D. Madm.
                             Yr. sincere & faithful
                                  Hble Sert.
                                     S. Feilding
Saturday Morning

(hover over blue text or annotations for clarification;
red text is normalised and/or unformatted in other panel)


Notes


 1. This is likely Anne Thursby (née Hanbury), who died on Wednesday 22 April 1778. Alternatively this could refer to the death of Honor Thursby (née Pigott), who died on Monday 24 September 1781.

Normalised Text


Dear Madam
      I am very anxious to know how Miss
Hamilton does after the Shock that I'm afraid
the news of Mrs. Thursby's Death must have
given her & take the liberty to trouble you
with all our Enquiries after her as I think a
note might only distress her if her Spirits
are agitated -- I have so bad a Cold at present
that I fear it will be hardly possible for me
to call on her as I hoped to have done either
today or Monday but we all long to know
how She is & I hope you will excuse my
detaining you so long & am dear Madam
                             Your sincere & faithful
                                  Humble Servant
                                     Sophia Feilding
Saturday Morning

(consult diplomatic text or XML for annotations, deletions, clarifications, persons,
quotations,
spellings, uncorrected forms, split words, abbreviations, formatting)



 1. This is likely Anne Thursby (née Hanbury), who died on Wednesday 22 April 1778. Alternatively this could refer to the death of Honor Thursby (née Pigott), who died on Monday 24 September 1781.

Metadata

Library References

Repository: John Rylands Research Institute and Library, University of Manchester

Archive: Mary Hamilton Papers

Item title: Letter from Sophia Fielding (née Finch) to an unidentified 'Madam'

Shelfmark: HAM/1/7/5/13

Correspondence Details

Sender: Sophia Fielding (née Finch)

Place sent: unknown

Addressee:

Place received: unknown

Date sent: between 22 April 1778 and 24 September 1781
notBefore 22 April 1778 (precision: high)
notAfter 24 September 1781 (precision: high)

Letter Description

Summary: Letter from Sophia Fielding, addressed to ‘Madam’, to whom she enquires for news of Hamilton. Fielding is anxious for Hamilton on the death of Mrs Thursby. She did not wish to write to Hamilton directly in case this would cause her more distress. Fielding has a cold; otherwise she would have waited on Hamilton.
   

Length: 1 sheet, 121 words

Transliteration Information

Editorial declaration: First edited in the project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers' (Hannah Barker, Sophie Coulombeau, David Denison, Tino Oudesluijs, Cassandra Ulph, Christine Wallis & Nuria Yáñez-Bouza, 2019-2023).

All quotation marks are retained in the text and are represented by appropriate Unicode characters. Words split across two lines may have a hyphen on the first, the second or both fragments (reco-|ver, imperfect|-ly, satisfacti-|-on); or a double hyphen (pur=|port, dan|=ger, qua=|=litys); or none (respect|ing). Any point in abbreviations with superscripted letter(s) is placed last, regardless of relative left-right orientation in the original. Thus, Mrs. or Mrs may occur, but M.rs or Mr.s do not.

Acknowledgements: Transcription and XML version created as part of project 'Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers', funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council under grant AH/S007121/1.

Transliterator: Tino Oudesluijs, editorial team (completed 11 November 2020)

Cataloguer: Lisa Crawley, Archivist, The John Rylands Library

Cataloguer: John Hodgson, Head of Special Collections, John Rylands Research Institute and Library

Copyright: Transcriptions, notes and TEI/XML © the editors

Revision date: 2 November 2021

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