Early newspapers often featured letters to the editor, enabling us today to read our ancestors’ thoughts in print. In this article I will journey through the years and look at a selection of such letters.

1749
An Appleby-in-Westmorland resident informed the Newcastle Courant of a legal case where a Scottish pedlar successfully sued a Justice of the Peace for wrongful arrest and false imprisonment ‘to the great mortification of the defendant’.

1794
In a Cambridge Intelligencer, we read about press gangs in ‘a shocking account of a young man crimped by a recruiting party’. The victim’s mother explained how her son ‘with a raging distempered brain was dragged from a mother who would have expended her last farthing to obtain his security’. She noted ‘the marks of ill treatment on his face’.

1798
Several papers reported that Sir John Dalrymple had written to Scottish papers recommending ‘the making of soft soap from herrings of which there is in this year an uncommon glut in the Firth of Forth’.

1822
In the Caribbean, a writer to the Barbadian, bemoaning modern manners, complained that although a young lady ‘laid her fair hand upon my shoulder, and prayed me very bewitchingly, not to allow her to be long without the pleasure of seeing me’, when he called and saw her at the window her servant told him she was not at home.

1840
A letter to the Cheltenham Examiner complained that coffins for the ‘out-door poor’ were carried through the High Street in the middle of the day, ‘to the great outrage of public decency’.

1845
The Arbroath Guide featured a complaint about reckless driving: ‘Furious driving is practised to an alarming extent, and as the rural police seem to take no interest in the matter, will you sir, have the kindness to do so.’ Apparently, stagecoaches were racing each other to the alarm of their passengers.

1855
The scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) complained to the Times about the stink of the heavily polluted River Thames. ‘The whole river was for a time a real sewer.’

1868
A circus in town angered a writer to the Isle of Wight Observer: ‘I happen to live in that part of town which has lately had to endure the infliction of a circus in our midst, and a most abominable nuisance to the neighbourhood it certainly was…It congregates the young of both sexes, and when they leave such places, it often happens, they fall into evil.’

1877
A ratepayer complained to the Dundee Courier about the lack of police action against street crime. ‘As soon as the eyes of a policeman fall upon a crowd, he walks to the other end of his beat hoping that it will be over by the time he comes back.’ He concluded: ‘I am afraid there is a screw loose somewhere in our police establishment.’

1880
The Isle of Wight Observer again: ‘I do not believe there is another town in the kingdom so badly off for public conveniences as Ryde. Instead of being placed in positions where everyone may find them, they are placed in the most out of the way and inaccessible corners. I have frequently been stopped and asked for information on the subject by strangers who have, in consequence of the absence of public conveniences of this kind, committed a nuisance on private property.’

1883
An unhappy reader of the Stonehaven Journal protested that the town ‘…is in the most dangerous state of immorality and it is high time to take steps of some sort to stamp it out.’ It seems there were ‘bands of young men assembled at the corners of streets, apparently for one purpose, to insult passers-by – ladies as well as gentlemen – by foul-mouthed utterances.’

1887
Ballroom dancing proved shocking to some readers of the Donegal Independent, who thought it immoral and unchristian. A lady defending dancing, said it was better than ‘drinking or playing cards, or perhaps, slandering one’s neighbours.’ Another responded: ‘If the members of your church are obliged to drink, gamble, slander their neighbours or dance, then by all means dance.’

1889
A plaudit letter in the Toronto Daily Mail described the paper as being ‘the ablest and most fearless champion of the truth, and altogether the most edifying public journal in Canada – a blessing to the land and to the people.’ As for the rival paper from London, Ontario, the London Advertiser: ‘Such outrageous trash should not be read by any self-respecting or patriotic Canadian.’

1890
An ‘indignant ratepayer’ told the Lanarkshire Upper Ward Examiner about the ‘debauchery and devilry’ which accompanied the recent county council elections. ‘It is monstrous that our burgh should be disgraced by such scenes and turned each year into a pandemonium of drunkenness and blasphemous obscenity.’

1891
An Aberdeen Press and Journal letter objected to Sir Charles Dilke being in the city. ‘It is an outrage done to all propriety and decency and an insult to the moral sense of our country.’ Sir Charles was an English politician reputed to have been the lover of his brother’s mother-in-law, and to have seduced his brother’s sister-in-law. Several women also complained that Charles had ‘approached them for a liaison’ and it was rumoured he asked a maid to join him and his lover in bed.

1893
In the Mid-Ulster Mail, we read from Theresa Lowry-Corry: ‘It is proposed to give Princess Mary of Teck a present on her approaching marriage to the Duke of York. As I believe there are many girls in County Tyrone who would be anxious to contribute towards it, I am writing to say I would gladly receive any contribution.’

1894
The Sheffield Daily Telegraph includes an early reference to soccer hooliganism. ‘In a recent edition of your paper there was a letter signed Burrowlee calling attention to the ruffianism and bad language caused by the footballers in Hillsborough Park. Allow me as a resident near the park to join in the protest.’ The same paper refused to publish another letter, saying: ‘Mr R. S. Bingham, wishes to have, in the guise of a letter to the editor, a free advertisement of local anarchist meetings,’ adding, ‘We cannot oblige him’.

1900
The Birkenhead News published a letter sent home from the Boer War by Sergeant John Matthews. ‘I have at last smelt Boer powder… at the battle of Jacobsdal…. I got through it without a scratch but I am sorry to say I have lost one of my best chums, Sergeant J. Patchett… One of our men who hails from Wrexham got shot five times… I am glad to say he is getting on very well… One day we walked eleven and a half hours in the boiling sun, and men and officers were dropping like sheep from want of water…’ John is mostly uncomplaining but says: ‘I do consider they should have treated us better than disgraceful on the boat, for I think men should be able to get water on the ship when they want it. The people of England do not know what we have to go through.’

1905
In the Shetland Times a local fisherman was angered by Dutch vessels anchoring in the harbour and obstructing fishing boats. ‘The harbour authorities, perhaps, enjoy their presence more than that of the Englishmen or Scotsmen, but if we had our way, the Dutchmen would shift, and that smartly.’

1909
A letter to the Alnwick Mercury has a quirky complaint: that clergymen were promoting the co-operative movement instead of the gospel.

1911
The New York Daily Tribune’s ‘Little Men and Little Women’ feature included competitions for children who wrote thank you letters for their prizes, such as: ‘I received four little books about Bug Land, and wish to thank you for them. I enjoyed reading them so much. Your little friend, Effie Allison, Brooklyn, New York.

1915
A letter from Thomas Ogilvie, Lieutenant-Colonel, Gordon Highlanders, to the Aberdeen Press and Journal, highlights the clothing shortages faced by some First World War soldiers. ‘As there seems to be some misapprehension with regard for the need for socks for men of the 4th Battalion Gordon Highlanders, I wish to say that we require all that we can get.’

1939
A writer to the Evening Star, Washington DC complained about ‘those representatives who voted to tax everyone in the district apart from themselves and their employees.’

1941
The Reverend A. B. Morley wrote to the Buckingham Advertiser and Free Press criticising a motion to ban conscientious objectors from playing cricket.

Further reading:
Now Mr Editor! Letters to the Newspapers of Nineteenth Century Birmingham, by Stephen Roberts, 2015