Manchester | 27th. February 1843.
My dear John
Independent of my long silence I think it is high time to acknowledge the receipt of your kind letter1 which I received last week. When I look back to the date of our parting at Cork2 and reflect on the length of time that has elapsed without either seeing (or writing to) each other, for my part I feel the most poignant sensation of shame and regret. I will not aggravate the impropriety of my omission by amusing you with useless and childish excuses – but confess that an unaccountable negligence and foolish habit of procrastination have made me so inattentive. I entreat of you not to consider me as deficient in friendship for you – for I feel convinced that our long acquaintance and perfect knowledge of each other will be sufficient grounds to exhonorate me from that charge – I am happy to hear that you are so very comfortably situated – but your low rate of pay I am sure preys upon your mind in this country – I wish you were here as there is a fine field for employment for a young man of your abilities – and I have no doubt it would be in my power from my extensive respectable connexion in Manchester to be able to procure you a good situation.
I seem to hear you say – what are you doing for yourself? ‘Wait a wee’ as the Scotchman says. I have read and studied more since I came to Manchester than all the rest of my days put together, and believe me I find the effects of it – Since I received your letter I have been out every evening – perhaps you are not aware that I have an uncle and a host of cousins in this town. They are all manufacturing chemists3 – My uncle carries on one concern in one part, his eldest son who is married in another part and within ½ a mile of the office.4 And two others of my cousins in another, this opens a great connexion of acquaintances for me. In fact they are all so kind and so fond of me that they are fighting to get me to spend the evening with them. I have many things to communicate to you, but am resolved to devote this letter to apology alone – I will write to you again in about a week. Remember me kindly to all my friends in Preston – and
believe me | my dear John | your affectionate friend | T. M. Foy
RI MS JT 1/11/3576
LT Transcript Only
your kind letter: letter missing.
the date of our parting at Cork: 10 June 1842; see letter 0147.
I have an uncle and a host of cousins in this town. They are all manufacturing chemists: The adjective manufacturing distinguished those chemists who, unlike pharmaceutical chemists, were concerned with the industrial applications of chemistry, as well as the manufacture of chemical products. In the 1830s there were some thirty-three manufacturing chemist firms in Manchester, and the Chemical Society’s records reveal that the ‘largest regional concentration of manufacturing members was in the north-west’, where ‘most of the major companies employed at least one trained chemist’ (R. Bud and G. K. Roberts, Science Versus Practice: Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), p. 104). There are no records of any manufacturing chemists in Manchester at this time called Foy, so Foy’s uncle and cousins were presumably on his mother’s side of the family, with a different surname.
the office: presumably the Divisional Office of the English Ordnance Survey’s 4th Division, located in Manchester.
Please cite as “Tyndall0189,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on 29 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/tyndall/letters/Tyndall0189