WCP6127

Letter (WCP6127.7084)

[1]1

10 Downing Street,

Whitehall, S.W.

15 Nov[ember]. 1913

Private

Dear Madam2,

The Prime Minister3 desires me to thank you for your letter of the 14th. inst[ant].

Instructions will be given at once for the payment to you of the [2] grant from the Royal Bounty Fund4 & an order should reach you in the course of a week.

The formalities required for the award of a pension5 take a little time, but if you write to the Paymaster General6 in about a month’s time, all should be in order. The pension will date from the 1st. April last, so that the first payment will cover the instalments for three quarters.

I am to add that, if you have not already done so, application should be made for the amount of your husband’s pension accrued to the date of his death. The Paymaster General will, I am sure, give you any information which you may require.

Yours faithfully | F. W. Leith-Ross7 [signature]

1
The page is numbered WP1/9/51 in pencil in the top LH corner. "F. W. Leith Ross" is written in pencil in the top RH corner.
2
Wallace, Annie (née Mitten) (1846-1914) ARW’s wife (widow).
3
Asquith, Herbert Henry, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith (1852-1928), Liberal Prime Minister 1908-1916.
4
A special UK government fund originally set up in 1782 by Edmund Burke, now disbanded. Gifts, grants and pensions were paid out from the fund under the patronage of the Prime Minister and no accounts were ever published.
5
Refers to the payment to Annie Wallace as widow of ARW, who had received a pension from the Civil List. Such pensions are traditionally granted by the Sovereign upon the recommendation of the First Lord of the Treasury (Prime Minister) to "such persons only as have just claims on the royal beneficence or who by their personal services to the Crown, or by the performance of duties to the public, or by their useful discoveries in science and attainments in literature and the arts, have merited the gracious consideration of their sovereign and the gratitude of their country."
6
Strachey, Edward, 1st Baron Strachie (1858-1936), Paymaster General in the Liberal administration of Herbert Henry Asquith at the date of the letter.
7
Leith-Ross, Frederick William (1887-1968) Private Secretary to the Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith at the date of the letter.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP6127.7084)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP6127,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 2 May 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP6127