correspondence

I have to admit, this made me laugh.

My money's on the donkey :)

Ahahahaa, this is brilliant! No one writes letters like this anymore!

A man after my own heart.

I have some of these from original series in my collection -www.railarchive.org.uk

A 1912 letter by G. W. Peters to Mr. W. de C. Ravenel requesting the forwarding of "my picture 'Battle of Caloocan'" which is presumably the picture to be found at commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Battle_before_Caloocan,_... books.google.com/books?id=FmASAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA14&lp... shows that it was included in The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution and United States National Museum at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 1909 The same book says (on page 5), "The act also provided that the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum should exhibit such articles and material of an historical nature as would impart a knowledge of our national history, especially that of Alaska, Hawaii and the Philippine Islands, and that part of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains. The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution designated Mr. Ravenel, Administrative Assistant, U. S. National Museum, as representative of the Smithsonian Institution and National Museum to the Government Board, which was created by Congress and charged with the preparation of the exhibit." So perhaps Peters had loaned the picture and wanted it back. The Battle of Caloocan was in the Philippines near the start of the Spanish-American War. As noticed on the Wikipedia page, the picture was published in a 1899 book, "Harper's Pictorial History of the War with Spain, Vol. II"

This is fantastic historical material. Thank you for sharing your collection!

Course this kinda thing doesn't happen nowadays.... perish the thought. Blimey my giro's a bit late. Mind you you'd have to have command of quite few languages.

This style of censor label was used from the beginning of the war in September 1939 until the War Office responsibility for censorship passed to the Ministry of Information in April 1940. This censor label also has a reference number "PC66" at the top right, barely seen in the image, and at that time the text on the labels reads "OPENED BY CENSOR" but this was changed to "OPENED BY EXAMINER". The very latest use I have seen of this type of label is July 1940, so this photo must have been taken before then. Most of this info can be verified in the Torrance & Morenweiser UK censorship book published by the Civil Censorship Study Group, British Empire Civil Censorship Devices WWII: Section 2 (pub 1991): Civil Censorship in United Kingdom.