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CHARLES HUNTRISS - LETTERS HOME

Family, five hundred lines, and Fenians

Harold thanks you for you letter he is in bed and had a headache yesterday and a pill at night but he is a little better this morning.

Lelly was coming to meet us yesterday afternoon to go a walk (with) us but it was wet so she could not come. Cousin Ellen and Louisa were coming with her.

But if it is fine on Saturday we are going there.

Jimmy gave us five hundred lines last week for making a row, first for us making a noise in the bedroom in the morning and he came up and gave us two hundred, and then I made another downstairs and he made it five hundred but they are all finished now.

The examination begins tomorrow for the higher forms but for the others it begins on Monday.

I think that I can hardly help getting this merit holiday as ...

... I have only lost two ??? for conduct - if we do all get it we will to go Uncle Henry's for the whole day very likely as it is on Saturday if it is fine.

And now with best love from us all to all, I remain your affectionate son

Tell Bill I am glad to hear that the Fenian head centre is rapidly improving in ??? worrying

Fenians

During the mid-nineteenth century the ranks of the English working class were swelled by the immigration of may tens of thousand Irish people. An important feature of Irish immigrant life was the emergence of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB), the Fenians, during the 1860s.

On 5th October 1867, it was decided to arm Halifax Borough Police with Colt revolvers and with cutlasses on account of there being known Fenians in the town.

Newspaper cutting from 1866