ABSTRACT
These letters are about and by British immigrants in America, and were originally published in newspapers from the 1870s through the 1890s. They cover some issues not found in the other letters in this volume. The 1873 letter from the Norwich Mercury includes details on the difficulties that some immigrants faced in Orange, Texas: ‘we work from daylight to dark … We have been eaten up with mosquitoes.’ ‘The house you live in [back in England] is the Queen’s hall to what this is’. The 1884 letter from the Eastern Weekly Press is from an English immigrant in Dallas to his father in Norfolk. In addition to providing details about his work, he notes that ‘There are plenty of English people. They are very nice people and they find us a home whenever we require one.’ The 1882 letter from Michigan remarks on the scarcity of farm labourers there and the opportunities for more English immigrants: ‘the farmers and business men of Michigan are very anxious to obtain English immigrants to work for them’. The writer is coming to England in autumn to recruit more immigrants: ‘I have received orders from many rich farmers and business men to solicit honest, reliable English men and women to come out to Michigan’. He notes correctly that ‘It is the facility with which folks become farmers here that creates and keeps up such a scarcity of farm labourers and domestic servants’. And he claims that ‘I have orders for upward of 800 English farm labourers, and for upwards of 300 general servants. Many farmers here will pay the passage from England to Michigan.’ This letter and the others can be effectively used with the biographies in this volume.
