[Cholera epidemic in Madeira, 1856.] Autograph Letter Signed from Tom Taylor, Secretary of the Board of Health (and future editor of Punch), to his former school fellow Rev. A. J. D. D’Orsey, arranging for medical publications to be sent him.

See his entry in the Oxford DNB. D’Orsey was Professor of Elocution at University College, London. 4pp, 12mo. Bifolium. On aged, brittle paper, with slight wear and discoloration, a few closed tears along folds and traces of stub adhering to second leaf, but with entire text clear and intact. A long untidy letter, with writing up the margin on outer two pages. Addressed to ‘The Revd. A J D’Orsey’ and signed ‘Tom Taylor’. The topic is an outbreak of cholera at Madeira, about which D’Orsey has clearly launched an appeal. (He may well be the author of the letter on the subject quoted from in The Medical Times, 4 October 1856.) Begins: ‘Dear Sir / I remember you perfectly as my class fellow at Glasgow. [Taylor had spent two sessions there before going up to Cambridge.] I am very sorry that your letter finds me making holiday in the country, instead of at my office, the Genl Bd of Health in London’. (Taylor was appointed Assistant Secretary to the Board of Health in 1850, and was Secretary from 1854 to the Board’s abolition in 1858.) Had he been at his post he would have been ‘in the very centre of such information as you require’. All he can do is ‘write by this post to Mr Session, our Medical Officer, sending him your [?] & letter & requesting him to transmit to you sets of all the Papers in the Office likely to be of practical service to you in your efforts to invetigate for the present, a guard for the future against, the terrible visitation which has befallen Madeira.’ If Taylor can in any way ‘direct public attention to the sad case of that island it will give me satisfaction to do so, but I shd. think the facts, imperfectly known as they are, wd. speak trumpet-tongued.’ ‘English benevolence’, he feels, ‘is seldom backward to relieve distant & strange distress’ (the recent Potato Famine in Ireland is presumably too close to home), and ‘Madeira is both far off enough & startling enough to rouse the sensibilities of this country.’ He is ‘far off from even a country town’ (he cannot even ‘procure a Post Office order’ to send a ‘mite’ towards D’Orsey’s appeal), but is sure that Session will be ‘prompt’ and the books will reach D’Orsey in time. In a postscript he gives his ‘address for the next week’.