Manuscripts and publications, 1781-1793.

ArchivalResource

Pickett, William. Manuscripts and publications, 1781-1793.

Manuscripts and publications, 1781-1793.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/702185869

Manuscript, in a single hand, of a collection of several hundred handwritten notes, newspaper clippings, and printed materials, pasted and tipped in, recording Pickett's activities in London public office both as Alderman and Lord Mayor. The volume includes, for example, numerous letters and newspaper clippings recording his opposition to installing a turnpike on Blackfriars Bridge. Other documents concern his suspicion of the Bank of England and his requests to convene the Proprietors of Bank Stock to examine the state of their affairs, including a printed pamphlet and a proposal for a proprietors' list, on which he includes himself, for direction of the Bank of England, in opposition to the list proposed by the House, and documents recording his bid for election to the list. The volume also contains his disagreement via private correspondence with William Barnard on the subject of press warrants; a newspaper clipping describing Pickett speaking out against the slave trade to the West Indies; and many documents regarding plans for public improvements of streets and houses in London, including widening and improvement the entrance into the city of London, expressed in pamphlets, bills, and the printed Parliamentary act on the subject, with engravings of the city and city plans pasted in. Elsewhere, he writes numerous letters to William Grenville campaigning against the use of military patrol of the Bank in London; the volume contains several replies by Grenville as well as notes on Pickett's meeting with him on July 22, 1790. The manuscript also contains a substantial number of documents regarding the impressment of men in London into the Navy, including Pickett's request to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to release two freemen porters from their impressments; the Admiralty Office's refusal; and their repeated requests that Pickett institute ways to discover seamen concealed in the city, including delivering to Pickett 100 blank press warrants to give to city constables for the purpose of impressing those seamen into service. The manuscript also records newspaper clippings and other documents representing Pickett's campaign to become the city's Representative in Parliament in 1790, and his involvement in investigating the management of the hospitals of Bridewell and Bethlem, including a printed report and a list of employee positions and their duties. Also included in the volume is a handwritten daily calendar of justice business he transacted at Guildhall during his year as mayor; a printed list of members of the Royal Society in 1772; newspaper clippings of poetry written to Pickett; further notes on the abolishment of the slave trade at the end of the volume; and, pasted in the back flyleaf, an engraved advertisement for a dinner and ball at the Mansion House of Pickett, Lord Mayor, in 1790.

1 v. (326 leaves) : ill. ; 33 cm.

Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library