ABSTRACT
Normally, anonymous letters are not included in these volumes, but this one, written to Revd Bleaymore, from Jail Hospital, Chester, Pennsylvania, is amazing for its content. We have here a criminal English immigrant. We do not know his crime, but he cries for help from ‘Rev Bleaymire, Dear and Honored Benefactor’, asking for more assistance, a frantic call for more money. He is a ‘wretched destitute prisoner in a foreign land’, and a powerful reminder that not all British immigrants made positive contributions to America – an impression often made by the sources, which are biased in that direction. The letter is sad, admitting that his parents’ hearts would break if they knew his situation: ‘let them mourn me as dead than that they should curse me for bringing so great disgrace on the family name’.
