[Thomas Bywater Smithies, temperance and animl welfare campaigner.] Autograph Letter Signed to W. Allan, who is offering to distribute his periodical gratis.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. 1p, 12mo. In good condition, lightly aged and creased. Folded for postage. Signed ‘T. B. Smithies’ and addressed to ‘W. Allan Esq / 17 South Grove East’. The subject is Smithies’s monthly ‘improving paper’, the ‘British Workman, and Friend of the Sons of Toil’, which he had launched in 1855, and which Allan is clearly offering to distribute gratis. He is much obliged by Allan’s favour of the previous day, but explains: ‘At present I am very seriously out of pocket with my little publication, & I cannot therefore do all I would do’, but if Allan will show the present letter to his publisher ‘Mr Partridge, of Paternoster Row’, he will supply him with copies ‘at the trade price’. He ends in the hope that Allan’s ‘gratuitous distribution’ of the works ‘will do good to many amongst the working classes’.