[MANUSCRIPT] A Woman’s Missionary and Domestic Record, 1846–1878

England/Wales: 1846-1878. Hardcover. 34 pages of manuscript text with 9 additional pieces of handwritten material laid in. This manuscript was compiled by a woman who appears to have devoted much of her life to helping others. The earliest pages of this lined volume contain a chart recording activities across five infirmary wards, dated October 18, 1867, to February 18, 1868. Each line lists either the number of men in each ward or her recorded acts of service—such as reading the Bible aloud or simply sitting and visiting with patients.

Interspersed throughout are handwritten recipes and household remedies, including lemon syrup, plum pudding, gooseberry pie, oatmeal biscuits, seed cake, Cornish pasties, fermented bread, and a wide range of medicinal and domestic preparations: remedies for cough, diphtheria, whooping cough, chilblains, and sleeplessness; formulas to remove vermin from old houses; and instructions for cleaning white marble.

The compiler’s religious devotion is reflected in her inclusion of moral verses and copied texts, such as an epitaph from Old Mother Shipton’s Tomb in Clifton Yard, Yorkshire, and the poem “One More in Heaven” by Marian Farningham.
Ten pages dated 1872–1878 record “facts connected with my work as L. Missionary collector,” likely referring to her efforts on behalf of the London Missionary Society. In these entries she notes the outcomes of her appeals for donations—some declined, others gave to different causes, and many simply offered their good wishes. The laid-in sheets continue the pattern of recipes and religious verse, together forming a vivid portrait of a charitable, devout woman and her domestic life in mid-19th-century Britain. Black floral patterned boards. Good. Item #4738

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