Alfred Austin to Faraday   19 April 1860

Office of Works, &c., 19 April 1860.

Sir,

With reference to your letter of the 12th ultimo¹, reporting your opinion on the different processes of Mr. Szerelmey and Mr. Ransome, for preserving the outside stonework of the New Palace at Westminster, I am directed by the First Commissioner of Her Majesty’s Works², &c., to send you herewith copy of a letter, dated the 2d instant, which he has received from Mr. Ransome on the subject³, and also copy of a letter, dated the 27th May 1859, from Mr. Warrington⁴ [sic] to Mr. Ransome⁵, containing the analysis referred to by the latter, and which, in a letter from him, dated the 28th May⁶, he states was made upon a composition scraped by him from the surface of the buttress at the south-west end of the Terrace of the New Palace in the presence of the then First Commissioner⁷; and I am to request that you will have the goodness to inform the First Commissioner whether you are satisfied that Mr. Szerelmey’s composition does not contain oleaginous or other organic matter, which by exposure to weather would cease to exercise its preservative power; and also, whether your attention, and that of Sir R. Murchison, was so exclusively directed to the latter applications of the two processes of Mr. Szerelmey and Mr. Ransome that you did not consider the results of the earlier applications of both those processes, and whether you are satisfied that Mr. Szerelmey’s is the best process for the purpose, at present known.

I am, &c. | (signed) Alfred Austin. | Secretary.

Dr. Faraday