AGENTS AND GENERAL LETTER BOOK. COMMENCING 19TH OCT. 1859 ENDING 31ST DECEMBER 1861. Mr. Webb Hayward Solicitor Rochester 19 October 1859.

SOLICITOR'S COPY LETTER BOOK, ROCHESTER, 1859

Publication Date: 1859

About this Item

Lined copy letter book, with manuscript entries. [23] p. index (1 page blank) + 309 p. + [16] p. blank. [6] registered letter receipts tipped in. Bound in vellum, marbled boards and edges. Extremities worn, especially at top of spine. Ink titles. Clean interior in several legible copperplate hands. The outgoing letters of a busy Rochester solicitor, amounting to some 1,200 separate entries over a period of two years and ten weeks. In the 1878 directory, William Webb Hayward of 196 High Street, Rochester, was also Clerk of the Peace, and to the trustees of St. Bartholomew's Hospital and registrar of the county court, etc. The new letter book opens with the acrimonious dissolution of Esell and Hayward: 'Mr. Esell has excluded me from the offices and he has all the Books and Accounts' and 'has treated me in a very cruel manner depriving me of a position worth £7,000 to me and putting his own relations in my place and refusing to return to me the £4,000 I paid him when I went into partnership.' He was also pursuing the Postmaster General over a letter, misdirected 'to another party thereby doing me a serious injury and inducing the commencement of legal proceedings against me.' Hayward acts on behalf of the Commissioners of Paving, etc., Rochester and Strood and writes to Samuel Smiles (1812-1904, author of Self-Help and Lives of the Engineers), Secretary of the South Eastern Railway about water dripping from a bridge over Strood High Street. He also acts for a client, who is claiming damages from the London, Chatham and Dover Railway, as goods, sent from Chatham to Canterbury, arrived late and caused financial loss. Another failed delivery was the case of the 'fish missent' by Messrs. Pickford from London to Stroud in Gloucestershire (instead of Strood), for which loss the client claimed £5.5.6. Mr Aveling was written to in December 1861, 'the men in charge of your engine having refused to pay the Toll [at Strood] yesterday', Hayward also observing that the weight of the locomotive was not 'legibly conspicuously affixed thereon,' (the toll depended on the weight). Thomas Aveling (1824-82), the pioneer of steam traction engines, had just established his main works in Strood, having developed his first self-moving engine in 1859. Hayward was involved in several maritime cases. In 1860, a ship named The Guard, belonging to Frederick Fussell of Rochester, coal merchant, ran aground at the mouth of the Tees, and was salvaged by a shipbuilder, inevitably resulting in a dispute over conflicting claims and costs. Inland waters close to home also claimed his attention. The brig Tanner of Whitby 'was with her cargo seriously injured.owing to the defective and improper Moorings in the River Medway.' Hayward acted for the owner against Rochester Corporation and the case became complicated when he discovered that the city had borrowed diving apparatus from the Royal Engineers to survey the moorings, 'notwithstanding Captn. Mann's denial I am in a position to prove that the request for the loan was made by the Water Bailiff's son to the Sapper who referred him to the Sergeant who referred him to the Officer who gave permission.' Hayward complained of Captain Mann's conduct to the War Office. He also communicated with the Secretary of State for War on another matter involving the Royal Engineers at Chatham. A local builder, Mr Alfred Stump of Brompton had been unable to obtain payment of his outstanding account for constructing their new Mess House. Captain Casey, R.E. of the Ordnance Survey office, Southampton, received a complaint from Hayward on behalf of a farmer of Smolledge, near Chatham, whose field of peas has been damaged by a survey team. Along with his corporate clients and the usual conveyancing (including the sale of a windmill at Cliff) and probate work, Hayward was concerned in breach of promise and bastardy matters and also took the cases of many smaller litigants: a woman injured by the 'furious' driving of a grocer's cart, a M. Seller Inventory # 20960

Bibliographic Details

Title: AGENTS AND GENERAL LETTER BOOK. COMMENCING ...

Publication Date: 1859