Manuscript Accounts Day Book of Perks & Llewellyn, Dispensing & Family Chemist, High Street, Hitchin [interior now housed in Hitchin Museum], giving names and addresses of purchasers, with products and prices.

366pp., narrow folio (16 x 40 cm). 43 lines to the page. In original vellum binding, with covers ruled in blue. On front cover printed label of 'PERKS & LLEWELLYN, | Dispensing & Family Chemist, | HIGH STREET, HITCHIN.' Marbled edges and endpapers. First leaf with 5 cm closed tear. Written out in black ink, in two or three different hands, with the granting of credit recorded in red. Containing a mass of information about local history, product and price. Early entries are stamped with date, later entries have date written out. Besides each entry is a reference number to each purchaser's account. (The Three Counties Asylum, Bedford ('T. C. Asylum'), is numbered 393, and is a regular purchaser.) The first entry reads 'Elmsale. Esq. M. de C. Redcoats. /103/ Syr figs (Californ) 1[s] 9[d]'. The following entry, also on p.1, gives an interesting range of products: 'Willway. The Revd A. P. Weston Vicarage /366/ Sponge. 3[s]. 6[d] | Ess Camph. (Rubin) 1[s]. 0[d] | Camphor pilules Homeo. 6[d] | 2oz Menth & Eucalypt past. 8[d] | Varalettes 2[s]. 0[d]'. The firm was founded by John Perks in 1790, becoming Perks & Llewellyn in 1878. The shop manager Richard Lewis became proprietor in 1906. His daughter Violet Lewis ran the business from 1930 to 1961, when she sold up, preserving the historic interior in an annex to her house. Following a campaign by the Hertfordshire Medical and Pharmaceutical Trust, the interior opened as an exhibit at Hitchin Museum in 1990.