Lieutenant-Colonel Frederick English
Biography and letters of Lt Col Frederick English, Royal Engineers
Porters, the plantation house English visits, is on the coast to the north of Bridgetown. It is now a luxury holiday villa.
‘Cuffum’ is a local name for the tarpon (Megalops atlanticus) a large freshwater fish found in tropical and sub-tropical regions on both sides of the Atlantic.
You will be satisfied my dear Kate of my perfect restoration to health and activity when you understand from this ...
James Crichlow of Lears was the attorney for the owner, Sir Francis Ford, 2nd Bart, whose father had acquired the plantation on his marriage into the Anson family. There is still a farm at Lears, but no sugar is grown.
Marking Stockings
My dear Kate, rather a domestic sort of an amusement & not much in my West Indian way. It is done very very inferiorly in comparison with Miss Parker’s stile. ...
A curtain lecture is defined in Johnson’s Dictionary (1755) as ‘a reproof given by a wife to her husband in bed’. It also appears in letters 98 and 124.
John Watson Pringle was a Captain in the Royal Engineers and a veteran of Waterloo. His report to Parliament on the state of the prisons in the West Indies was published in 1838.
Tomorrow my dear Kate I shall be tormented with visitors and ...
Stoke Hall, Ipswich was Mrs English’s family home.
‘Poor Gardiner’ was James, brother of the Roche Court sisters, who had died aged about 25.
So my dear Kate it must be a foolscap sheet of paper and no lopping off the ends – very well I begin to flatter myself that the old Col’s letters are becoming more interesting than heretofore, notwithstanding they do not convey matter relative to ...
This letter is dated at the end; it was written on 22 November 1837 from Barbados.
‘Young Naghten’ is Midshipman Henry Naghten, Tom’s younger brother. Reefer is a colloquial term for a midshipman.
Well my dear Kate, don’t you begin to feel weary of such a frequent repetition of the same accounts from Barbados and conveyed in such numerous letters. My last was dated the 14th and ...
Not dated at head, but begun at Barbados on 8 December 1837
New books arrived in Barbados in good time. Jack Brag was a novel by Theodore Edward Hook, famous as a practical joker, published in 1837.
Rebels seeking to overthrow British rule in Upper Canada (now Ontario) took up arms in November, but they were defeated at the Battle of Montgomery’s Tavern on 7 December. However, armed protests ...
‘The Steam Bridge going to Southton’ was the new Woolston floating bridge carrying the road from Portsmouth to Southampton over the estuary of the river Itchen. Opened in 1836, a steam powered chain ferry was built in preference to a swing bridge to minimise interference with river navigation. Steam was used until 1967; it was replaced by a concrete bridge in 1977. English’s request for ...