ABSTRACT
Volume 3 opens with John Haigh’s letter of 1848, written from Honley, near Huddersfield, in West Yorkshire, to his brother, Benjamin, in Ohio. It is significant for its gloomy details about England in the late forties, when unemployment rose and hunger and revolution were possible threats. John Haigh was a minister, as he refers to his preaching and baptizing people. He also makes strange references to political problems in England, for example his observation: ‘senates insane. peers presumptious, parliament prodigal’. References to the violence of the French Revolution and the possibility of similar social unrest in Britain make this letter especially interesting. John would join his brother except that he is too old, and, ‘I cannot sufficiently set forth the state & suffering of the once happy homes of mery old England: some are wise & quit it for New England’. The distress of the textiles industry in Yorkshire runs throughout this letter. The existing errors and gaps in this typescript reflect the poor quality of the original manuscript.
