ABSTRACT
These letters from English immigrants in the California Gold Rush were originally published in The Times in 1850 and 1851, and are included here for the details they include. The fact that ‘Run away sailors receive $10 per day’ reveals that there were problems with crews absconding to seize better opportunities, which had also occurred during the time around the War of 1812. The high cost of provisions is noted, as is the case of one who is ‘liable to be turned out of the mines because he had not been able to pay the $20 per month licence for foreign miners’. The fact that there were ‘many Mexicans Chilians and English in the mines’ gives some sense of the multicultural environment that the immigrants experienced. It was not for everyone. Though one could say ‘I like this half savage life for a change very well’ another ‘would not advise anyone to leave £100 in England with all the comfort and ease of a good house for California if even they were to make $5000 here. No one likes this country.’ The letter of 1851 reports that there were English doctors in California, trying to cope with cholera.
