DISTRESS

3pp, 8vo. On three leaves with hole in one corner where they were attached with stud. In fair condition, lightly aged and worn. The letter is clearly a draft of a public letter to be signed by a number of eminent individuals, and was presumably composed by Bryce himself. No date or place, simply headed: 'To the Chairman of | The Government Distress Committee.' It begins: 'Sir, | We whose names are appended hereto view with concern the methods that seem about to be adopted for the relief of the distress caused by the war.

For the background to this letter see William Otto Henderson, 'The Lancashire Cotton Famine 1861-65' (1934) and Angela V. John, 'By the Sweat of their Brow' (2013). Between 14 April and 16 October 1862 Whittaker published a dozen letters on the 'Lancashire Distress' in the London Times, under the pseudonym of 'A Lancashire Lad'. Edwin Waugh, in his 'Home Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk During the Cotton Famine' (1867), describes Whittaker as 'one of the first writers whose appeals through the press drew serious attention to the great distress in Lancashire during the Cotton Famine.