M.R. Boulton J. Watt & Co. Correspondence

The London banking house correspondence is one of the most extensive series in the collection, and contains a wide range of information. The majority of the correspondence concerns financial matters, but there are also letters about supplies of food and drink for both Soho House and Aston Hall, and other such domestic matters, and also about employees of the Soho firms. The letters also contain a great deal of information about customers of the Soho firms, particularly of Boulton Watt & Co., the steam engine business.

The bundles are at their most voluminous for the 1820s and 1830s, and it is presumed that letters from that year are missing, although this was the year that the London cash agency was dissolved. The bundles from the earlier years also appear to be incomplete, and there were presumably bundles for the years prior to 1816 which are now also missing.

The letters are arranged in one single chronological series of bundles, with one bundle per year. At the end is an undated item, and a small number of letters about William Bissaker, a Boulton Watt & Co. employee.

More detailed information on each series is given in the Description field, while reference numbers and covering dates of the actual records, and a list of the old reference numbers will be found in the pdf of the full series list attached. Item level lists are available in the searchroom of Birmingham Archives and Heritage.

There are no restrictions on access to or use of the M.R.Boulton J.Watt & Co. Correspondence. However fragile items or those in a poor state of repair may not be served at the discretion of the Duty Archivist.

The records listed here are the surviving letters written to the London banking house established in 1802 and known during the period that these records cover as M. R. Boulton J. Watt & Co. The bank agents, John Mosley, A. F. Stonebridge and R. F. Davis for the period covered by these letters, corresponded on wide variety of business matters. Much of their correspondence was with individuals and firms at Soho, but they also corresponded with customers of the Soho firms, and friends and relatives of the Soho families who had accounts with the banking agency. The agents presumably kept copies of the letters they wrote in letter books or bundles, but none of these have survived.