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Document number: 7049
Date: 24 Oct 1854
Recipient: TALBOT William Henry Fox
Author: BOLTON John Henry
Collection: British Library, London, Manuscripts - Fox Talbot Collection
Collection number historic: LA54-53
Last updated: 18th February 2012

Lincoln’s Inn <1>
24th Oct 1854

My dear Sir,

I hope this will find you safely returned to Lacock and your family.

The time is now come for active preparation for the coming struggle <2> and I am now in the midst of the papers.

There is one great want that presses on me at this moment [–?] it is the Report of yr Lecture <3> at the Royal Society <4> on the 11th Feby 1839 and indeed the Report of any or Lectures or publications of your’s prior to the first Patent <5> – The first Report is to be found it seems, in the printed book of the Royal Socy’s proceedings – and if you have it in no other shape, I shall be particly obliged by your dispatching me the Vole at the earliest moment.

When enquiring at Sir Fredk Thesiger’s <6> I learn that he has named Monday or about that day for his 1st appearance in the Temple <7>

I have not been able to ascertain the name of the leading Counsel in opposition to us – but Carpmael <8> is of opinion that it will certainly not be the Atty Genl <9> he having no “chemical affinities” –

Until Sir Fredk arrives no idea can be formed of what he will require to finish his photographical education: but it seems to me that without reference to him whenever it will suit yr convenience to come to Town, we could turn your presence here to great accot I mean with reference to the witnesses & the taking down their evidence.

Believe me to remain My dear Sir Ever Your’s faithfully
J. H. Bolton

I have no direct news from the Crimea subsequent to the 30th Ulto my Gunner is was in death up to his neck in the trenches, & could not scribble.<10>

Notes:

1. One of the four Inns of Court, the ‘colleges’ of barristers at the English Bar. Bolton had his chambers [lawyer’s offices and, at the time, living-quarters also] there.

2. Talbot’s attempt to prove in the lawcourts that the collodion process was not a new invention but was covered by his Calotype patent. In Talbot v. Laroche [December 1854] he found himself having to defend his right to his patents and even his claim to the invention of photography on paper. [For an account of the patent cases, and the opposition to Talbot’s patents, see H. J. P. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson Benham, 1977), pp. 198–209.]

3. WHFT, Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which Natural Objects may be made to Delineate Themselves without the Aid of the Artist’s pencil. Read before the Royal Society, January 31, 1839 (London: R & J E Taylor, 1839). It was also published in the The Athenaeum (London) and in the Philosophical Magazine, but not in the Proceedings of the Royal Society.

4. Royal Society of London.

5. Photographic Pictures, Patent No. 8,842, 8 February 1841.

6. Sir Frederick Thesiger (1794–1878), later 1st Baron Chelmsford, Lord Chancellor [1858]. He was Leading Counsel for Talbot in Talbot v. Laroche, but his lack of scientific expertise was a disadvantage to Talbot’s case.

7. Another of the four Inns of Court, the ‘colleges’ of barristers at the English Bar.

8. William Carpmael (1804–1867), patent agent & engineer, London.

9. Sir Alexander James Edmund Cockburn (1802–80), Attorney-General 1852–56.

10. Bolton had a son, William (b. 1829) who may have been serving as a gunner. The Crimean War was a conflict between France, Britain and Turkey on one side and Russia on the other, 1854–1856. The underlying cause was fear of Russian expansion into the Ottoman Empire and India.

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