Last Wednesday I gave a talk about this interesting 1850s account book to the Tring & District Local History & Museum Society and all the slides are now available at:
You will find the menu on the left gives you access to
- A page describing the Account Book
- The Calendar - which in turn allows you to view all 283 folios
- William Brown's A-Z Customer Index
- The slides for the talk (to see additional notes press the [A] button)
Bearing in mind the recent news about the Conservative Party not properly declaring their election expenses one of the slides that cause much interest was:
The 1851 election was caused because one of the MPs was unseated because too much "bribery" money had been spent wining and dining prospective voters...
I think all the audience were distressed that historically valuable documents relating to the history of the town had ended up on ebay, and that some key documents have ended up with unknown buyers. It is possible that other less attractive looking but historically important documents may have been rubbished. At least the account book will end up in the museum collection - and the information it contains is available to all online.
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Two areas are still being worked on. The Calendar uses the headings on every page but only some pages have a supplementary list of personal names and places and it is hoped to complete this over the next few months. In addition I have still to add supplementary notes to some of the slides.
Three further books - the minute books of the Tring Agricultural Society - will also be passed the the museum when I have provided more online information about them.
In addition only a few pages have been studied in depth, and if you are interested in following up the history behind any folio (including those relating to people and places over the boundary in Buckinghamshire) do not hesitate to contact me.
