Thomas Barlow Allinson's letter of 1836 was among the small collection mentioned in The Revd William Atkinson of Kirkleatham & Cambridge (1755-1830). These letters survived apparently by chance, but very probably because of the intervention of Mr John Gaskin, MBE, of Whitby. He was a solicitors' clerk for many years with Buchannans of Whitby and may have come across the letters in their offices and thought them worth preserving – possibly for their unusual postal markings, as he had a keen interest in philately. The collection is now in the Northallerton Archives.
This is the story of one of those letters, as far as we can make it out. I say "we" because I'm indebted to my collaborator for contacting me in the first place and for all the research she has done. I hope this chance survival from 1836 might help the people who are trying to disentangle their Allinson forebears. The Allinsons you will meet in this blogpost lived in Whitby and near Penrith, in the parish of Dacre in Cumberland.
I'm quoting below from a transcript and I have made some alterations for readability's sake.
It's a story which begins with Dickensian echoes and goes to darker places …
 |
| Billiter Square: O.S. 1840s-1860s. National Library of Scotland |
It's 4 April 1836. The writer of the letter is a 24 year old solicitor's clerk called Thomas Barlow Allinson. He's an unhappy and worried young man, marked by a series of disappointments and trapped in a job he doesn't like. When he came to London from Staffordshire in 1830, he had thought that his uncle Josiah Allinson would help him to a clerkship in a trading or banking house. Six years later, he's still with Messrs Druce in Billiter Square off Fenchurch Street in the City of London, in a job that was supposed to be temporary. It's the Easter vacation for the law courts, and he's writing a personal letter from his employers' offices in the City.
Thomas is only a few months younger than Charles Dickens, who is now beginning his startling career as a writer – the first instalment of The Pickwick Papers appeared in print only weeks before Thomas started his letter. But Thomas's story has echoes of Dickens' much later and darker novels and the dark and dirty London of Bleak House is the one that Thomas knew.
Thomas is writing to a relation he has never met, a Miss Nanny Ellerby Allinson of Whitby. He is offering her information she wants and he has carried out a favour she has asked for – and between these two sections of his long letter, he has sandwiched a tactful and carefully-written account of the financial difficulties and disappointments beneath which he, his mother and his 7 siblings are labouring. Miss Allinson is now under something of an obligation towards him, and she might be able to help them.
