LIFEBOAT

The Civil Service Life-Boat Fund (now the Lifeboat Fund) was founded by a group of civil servants wishing to donate a single lifeboat to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. In 1866 they issued an appeal for £300 to government offices and raised the sum within a year. Since then the charity has supplied the RNLI with more than fifty lifeboats, which have saved nearly five thousand lives. The present two volumes, for 1892 and 1897, are uniform in heavily-worn halfbindings with black cloth spines and marbled boards.

Both transparencies negatives on plastic sheets. The two images attached by a thin vertical strip of Scotch tape. On the right (22 x 14.5 cm) the image of the ragamuffin boy fisherman, with net and rod, looking to the left. On the left (22 x 16.5 cm) his young sweetheart, with fishing nets aand lace apron, waving a lace handkerchief. His image with caption (old Breton poem): 'Dear God be good to me | The sea is so wide | And my boat is so small | Sold in aid of the R.N.L.I.' Her image with the same caption, but with the word 'his' replacing 'my'.

8vo, 4 pp. Bifolium. Sixty-eight lines of text. Complete and legible, but damaged: grubby and creased, with short closed tears and small hole at gutter. Interesting and informative letter. Stuart's message of condolence on Benjamin Whitworth's death is one of many which 'have been very acceptable more especially to his widow who has been laid aside so long with bad health, his daughters have been quite worn out'. Describes how his brother's health 'began to break down after a slight attack of paralysis some two or three years ago when at John Brown & Co Ld.

Charity administrator (1864-1938). Two pages, 16mo, on letterhead of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. 'This is the latest Chart published. It came out this month. We do not issue a larger copy or I would send it to you.'