Loan 96 RLF 5/18

This box contains analyses of the cases submitted to the Royal Literary Fund between 1880 and 1899. These records record information on the applicants whose cases were presented to the committee each month. The cases are divided into ‘new’ (first-time applicants) and ‘old’ (those who had applied previously and whose claims to merit had thus been examined). For each case, the books upon which the applicant’s claim rested are given; in some cases additional information, such as the applicants’ address, is also provided. For the old cases, the previous grants made are listed. The earlier case analyses, for 1839-1879, are filed in a separate box (Loan 96 RLF 5/17).

This box also contains documents and correspondence relating to daggers owned by Colonel Thomas Blood, best known for his attempt to steal the Crown Jewels in 1671. The daggers were bequeathed to the Fund as part of the estate of Thomas Newton (further details of the Newton Estate can be found in Loan 96 RLF 5/19). The file contains letters dated 1896 from Fitzgerald N Blood, who attempted to buy the daggers from the Fund; an 1936 letter from Charles Ffoulkes on their being displayed in the Armouries at the Tower of London; and an 1947 enquiry about the daggers from E Lunn, along with the Fund’s 1926 Annual Report and a reprint from The Antiquaries Journal of April 1927 (Vol. VII, No. 2), both of which contain further details regarding the daggers.

The documents are divided into folders as follows:

1: Analysis of Cases, 1880-1889

2: Analysis of Cases, 1890-1899

3: Colonel Blood’s Daggers