Letter from Eliezer Edwards to Hugh Nettlefold

Description:In November 1884, a lengthy article about the Botanical Gardens appeared in Edgbastonia magazine. This letter illuminates the background to the publication of that article.

Correspondence about the article began on 5 September 1884, when Henry Buckley of Samuel Buckley, Merchants, informed Hugh Nettlefold (a prominent Birmingham businessman and member of the Committee of the Birmingham Botanical and Horticultural Society) that Mr Edwards, the editor of Edgbastonia, wanted an appointment with him to discuss ‘inserting an article in a coming number’. Mr Buckley thought the article would be of value, presumably in order to raise funds. At the top of this letter is a note, which must have been written following the meeting with Edwards: ‘Authorised Mr. Edwards to charge up to £5.15.6’ [£5.77].

The article duly appeared in November. Following this, a letter from Edwards to Hugh Nettlefold was written on 5 December 1884, agreeing to a further meeting. At the top is another pencilled note: ‘Edwards wants 2 guineas [£2.10] extra for article’. Eliezer Edwards appears to have sole editorial control of Edgbastonia as he does not appear to refer to anyone else in this negotiation.

Further letters follow from Edwards to Nettlefold, explaining that the Editor of the Mercury newspaper was away and that the Gazette thought the article was too exclusively local for them. So it appears that Nettlefold, shocked by the high cost of the article, was trying to maximise the effect of his expenditure by inserting it into other publications as well.

The final letter on this matter is dated 30 December 1884, again from Edwards: 'I enclose account leaving the principal line blank. When I first saw you on the subject, and the price £4.4.0 [£4.20] was mentioned, I named that sum upon the understanding that the article was to occupy two pages, and the engraving one in the body of the magazine, whereas Mr Walter Chamberlain’s article alone filled four pages, and the leaflets containing the enquiry and the appeal - two pages – had to be separately printed.
My regular charge for advertisements is £2.12.6 [£2.63] per page and your matter occupies altogether six pages. I trust therefore that your committee will see the justice of making some addition to the sum named at first under a misapprehension of the real position of the case'.

If the Committee added the extra 2 guineas to the initial quotation of £4.4.0, we can assume that they paid £6.6.0 altogether for the article – a lot of money at that time (over £489 in today’s values, according to one calculation). The fund-raising potential of publicity in Edgbastonia was considered worth the outlay; as we read in another fundraising article, ‘there are hundreds of Edgbastonians to whom £16 is as nothing and would scarcely be missed’.<small>¹</small>


<font color="#666633"><small>¹ Edgbastonia, September 1883</small></font>