To John Higgins 14 May 1866
Down Bromley Kent
May 14 1866
My dear Sir
I beg leave to acknowledge & thank you for the sum of £262–8s–8d for rent placed to my account at the Union Bank.1
I had not heard that you had suffered so much from the cattle plague in Lincolnshire & am very much obliged to you for giving me information on the subject.2
I am extremely sorry to hear of the great loss which my sister’s tenant & your son have suffered.3
My dear Sir | Yours sincerely | Ch. R. Darwin
To | J. Higgins Esqre—
Footnotes
The payment was for six months rent on CD’s farm at Beesby, Lincolnshire (CD’s Investment book (Down House MS), p. 20). Higgins was CD’s land agent.
Higgins’s letter has not been found. Lincolnshire had seen a sharp increase in cattle infected with cattle plague or rinderpest, a cattle disease with very high mortality rates, since the beginning of 1866 (see Stamford Mercury, 2 March 1866, p. 6).
Susan Elizabeth Darwin’s tenant at Claythorpe in Lincolnshire was Joseph Gilbert. John Higgins’s son was John Higgins (1826–1902).
Summary
Acknowledges receipt of £262 8s. 8d.
Had not heard they had suffered so much from the cattle plague in Lincolnshire.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-5090G
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- John Higgins
- Sent from
- Down
- Source of text
- Dominic Winter Auctioneers (dealers) (10 April 2019, lot 138)
- Physical description
- 2pp LS(A)
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 5090G,” accessed on 26 May 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-5090G.xml
letter
