Loan 96 RLF 5/7/7

Contains documents relating to the Literary Fund’s twenty-one year lease of 72, Great Russell Street, which commenced in 1840. Includes a copy of the agreement, correspondence from John Mickle (the property’s owner), a solicitor’s letter on the agreement, extracts from the Minutes relating to the property, a second version of the agreement, a list of furniture sold to the Fund, a page of classified advertisements relating to Great Russell Street and letters from the North County Coal Company and William Tooke. Also contains a lengthy ongoing correspondence between Octavian Blewitt and John Mickle regarding the house and the rent, as well as letters, principally from Alexander Gordon, on the building’s upkeep. In 1858 the Pharmaceutical Society purchased the lease from Mickle with the intention of ‘annexing it hereafter to the adjoining House now occupied by them in Bloomsbury Square’; the file contains correspondence and notes relating to this, including letters from Elias Beverage (of the Pharmaceutical Society), from T.B. Macdonald on increased insurance premiums, and from William Frederick Pollock, and drafts of replies by Blewitt.