Maria Grace Saffery, Salisbury, to Anne Whitaker, Bratton, Friday, 7 November 1806.

Friday night in haste

   My dearest Anna will I know both pardon and anticipate a short letter when she finds that my beloved S– is just return’d from Bristol – he has been a very successful beggar & is in good health and spirits tho’ I am wary to add somewhat lame owing to a fall in ascending the couch to day  the skin of ye leg is broken but I hope the injury will be slight he would be very affectionately remembered to you & our dear Bror. – We are greatly improved in family comfort since Miss Ryland left  Carey is quite recovered of the feverish complaint he was attacked with before you left us & has but little remains of injury from the accident & he will lose some teeth but I am very happy to observe that his dr little face will not be totally disfigured – he is still troublesome but my fatigue is incomparably lessened for these few last days & nights but it is high time to satisfy you respecting dr Josh who is in good health tho’ for the last ten days his bowels have been a state which seemed to require the use of moderate astrigent – he has had a little medicine & tho not quite as free from nocturnal interruption as I wish he is better – you may believe me when I say there is not attendant circumstance to occasion the least anxiety no fever not even a foul tongue, no loss of appetite or spirits and I think his complexion is even improved by ye little malady if it may be termed one he sits near me at dinner & I pay attention to his diet he has drank porter since the period I mention in consequence of a fear that it might possibly reduce his strength – now pray do not imagine that I am in the least degree attempting to diminish his complaint  I have told you all if you would like any kind of medicine or diet for him in particular let me have yr opinion & I will promise to obey you – I hope my beloved Sister has got rid of her cold soon  Miss R. has had one or two fresh attacks of this kind  she begs the kindest remembrances.  I feel @ her much in the same manner as when we conversed – I think Miss Mason very pious & amiable –

   You will say that I dwell in the midst of alarms when I tell you that a poor woman fell, it was supposed under the immediate stroke of death – at our door on Tuesday @ noon and that at the instance of ye surgeon she was bro’t into our house while they were using serious means of relief without indeed any hope of success she was perfectly unknown to ye surrounding mob who were prevented by ye Constable &c &c from entering with her, she had many attendants of our family & others but as humanity did not urge I of course waited < >  she remained @ half an hour during which time her dissolution was expected every moment  but contrary to all expectation she was removed in a living tho senseless state to the hospital in Baymore you may imagine that we were in a state of very solemn suspense @ the result of her entrance into the house, but no hesitation cd be tolerated when misery had such claims – I have since learned that she is in a state of recovery – but adieu I have exceeded my intention as to ye measure of my epistle too the matter I can say nothing you will remember us suitably to my Father tell him Mr Torley dined with me a day or two since –  once more adieu 

         yrs most faithfully & tenderly

                                 M G Saffery

Remember our Child bed linen Society when you have opportunity  I mean with reference to the plan – Mr Marsh is still confined but better –

Text: Timothy Whelan, gen. ed.,  Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols. (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 6, pp. 223-24 (annotated version); Saffery/Whitaker Papers, acc. 142, I.B.1.(25.), Angus Library, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Address: Mrs Philip Whitaker | Bratton Farm | to be left at the | Red Lion | Warminster | 7 November 1806. Postmark: Warminster, 8 November 1806. 

The ‘Miss Ryland’ mentioned above is Harriet Frances Ryland, but the ‘Miss R’ mentioned later is apparently not the same Ryland; however, since Lucy Ryland is yet to join her sister at Salisbury, this is most likely Elizabeth Ryland, daughter of John Ryland of Bristol. References to the several Rylands living at one time in the Saffery home in the following letters can be difficult to distinguish. 

Maria Saffery's involvement with the Child Bed Linen Society in Salisbury mirrors that of Eliza Gould Flower, who, while living at Harlow, Essex, in September 1805, assisted in the formation of a Child Bed Linen Society in that village, adapted from the rules of a similar society she helped establish in Cambridge in 1801. She attached the rules of this second society in a letter to Rebecca Gurney of Walworth, Southwark, dated 15 September 1805.