CARMICHAEL-SMYTH

[British Guiana and Sir Henry Barkly, 1850.] Nine pages of cuttings from The Times and the Globe, by ‘NIGER’ - identified herein as Sir James Robert Carmichael - and ‘Jacob Omnium’ (Matthew James Higgins), on Governor Barkly and slavery.

Author: 
British Guiana; Sir James Carmichael-Smyth (1779-1838), governor; Sir James Robert Carmichael (1817-1883); Sir Henry Barkly (1815-98), governor; Matthew James Higgins ('Jacob Omnium') (1810-68)
Smyth
Publication details: 
The Times and the Globe, London. Four letters by 'NIGER' to the Globe dated 29 and 30 January, 9 February and 2 March 1850. Four letters to The Times (two apiece from 'NIGER' and 'JACOB OMNIUM'), dated in October and November [1850].
£280.00
Smyth

A contemporary manuscript note to the present item reveals for the first time the identity of ‘Niger’, one of the two correspondents of whose letters it consists. (And minor manuscript corrections to the last of the four letters would seem to suggest the involvement of the author.) This is Sir James Robert Carmichael (1817-1883), 2nd Bart, who was intimately connected with British Guiana through his father Sir James Carmichael-Smyth (1779-1838).

Contemporary manuscript copy of a letter from Captain John Bower, 84th Regiment, to his father Alexander Bower of Kincaldrum House, Kinnettles, describing how he saved the life of the future Sir James Carmichael-Smyth while shark fishing off the Cape

Author: 
Captain John Bower (d.1800), 84th Regiment of Foot, eldest son of Alexander Bower of Kincaldrum House, Kinnettles, near Dundee [Sir James Carmichael-Smyth (1779-1838)]
Publication details: 
Letter 'dated Cape Town May 10th 1797', on paper also with watermarked date '1797'.
£120.00

2pp., 4to. Good, on lightly-aged laid paper. Bower begins by stating that he is sending 'a Copy of a Letter which I have received from Dr Carm Smyth [James Carmichael Smyth (1742-1821) of the Middlesex Hospital]'. Smyth's son (the future Sir James Carmichael-Smyth) is 'a very fine handsome young man Lieut in the Engineers come out a Passanger [sic] in the same ship with us'. Bower and Smyth 'wisely went into the Boat which was lashed to the Stern Gallery to fish sharks which were following the ship - the Boat suddenly canted round in the slings, upon which poor Smyth went plump into the sea'.

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