CD memorandum   July 1857

CD invested £250 in fifty shares in the Patent Siliceous Stone Company, owned by David Thomas Ansted and Frederick Ransome, in 1852. He made a loan to the company of £250 in 1853, and two separate loans, also each for £250, to Ransome in 1854 and to Ansted in 1855. CD by this memorandum recorded his intention to write off his investment in the company, and to reduce to 2 per cent the rate of interest on his loans to Ansted and Ransome, originally set at 3$\frac{1}{2}$ per cent. Both men made interest payments at this rate between 1857 and 1861, but there is no evidence that any of the principal was ever repaid. See CD’s Investment book (Down House MS), p. 59; and Correspondence vol. 5, letter to J. S. Henslow, 8 March [1853] and n. 1. For the later history of CD’s dealings with the company, see Correspondence vol. 12, letter from Frederick Ransome, 7 March 1864 and nn. 1 and 2.