The Electric & International Telegraph Co. | (Incorporated 1846) | Engineer’s Office | Lothbury, London. | 6th. May 1857.
Dear Sir,
I have received the enclosed invitation2 from Mrs Crosland.3 Unless I hear from you to the contrary I will meet you at the train which leaves London Bridge Station for Greenwich4 at 6.5 p.m.5 on Friday evening—Their house being nearer to Greenwich than to Blackheath.6
Very truly yours | Latimer Clark
Professor Tyndall.
P.S. | Should I by any possibility not be there, you will of course proceed on without me—you will easily find the house by a little enquiry. | LC
RI MS JT/1/TYP/1/222
LT Typescript Only
Latimer Clark: Josiah Latimer Clark (1822–98), an English civil engineer who worked on, among other subjects, telegraphy and submarine cables. He was assistant, and later chief, engineer at the Electric and International Telegraph Company (ODNB).
enclosed invitation: enclosure missing but the content can be inferred from a letter in Faraday’s correspondence in which Clark and Faraday were invited to visit the spiritualist, Camilla Crosland. See letter 3280, Clark to Faraday, 2 May 1857, Faraday Correspondence, pp. 228–9.
Mrs Crosland: Camilla Dufour Crosland (née Toulmin, 1812–95), a writer of fiction and poetry who published a book about spiritualism in 1857 (ODNB). Tyndall noted in his journal that he had an ‘interview with the spirits’ on Friday 8 May 1857, and that Sarah Faraday was afraid that he ‘might fall into the same trap as Latimer Clarke’ (Journal, JT/2/13c/932–3).
Greenwich: a district in southeast London, location of the Royal Observatory.
6.5 p.m.: 6:05 p.m.
Blackheath: an area of southeast London south of Greenwich.
Please cite as “Tyndall1390,” in Ɛpsilon: The John Tyndall Collection accessed on