Friday 14 November 2014

Sweaters again

From The Times, 14 November 1914. 


SWEATERS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES.

Sir,—May I trespass on your space once more to answer the many inquiries as to whether I am still dyeing sweaters and sending them to the troops?  I am indeed.  In fact the adjutant's acknowledgments of those I have sent are such that I have no choice now but to go on to the end of the war.  I am promised sweaters from Canada and Ceylon—which is pleasantly symbolic if a little disconcerting to my efforts to maintain some equality of thickness.  But this good help must be long upon the road.

I asked for 150, and your readers sent me 5,000.  May I now modestly ask for another 150 —with the same result?  And if all the old sweaters in the British Isles have already been given to me or other persistent beggars, will not more of your readers follow the generous example of some and send me a few new ones?

Let me here acknowledge nearly 400 that have come with no deducible means of acknowledgment.  Let me acknowledge them in a sentence of a letter just to hand.  “I wish to write once again before we move to tell you how immensely the men appreciate the sweaters—they are quite the most useful garments they could have."  Well, the vats are empty but not the cash-box.  May I not go ahead till the Colonial help comes?

Yours faithfully,
JOHN PENOYRE.
8, King's Bench-walk, Inner Temple, E.C., Nov. 13.

[This is the next in a continuing series of letters from John Penoyre asking for old sweaters - previous appeals are here and here.  

A card sent out by John Penoyre acknowledging the gift of a sweater is shown below, from an archive at the King's Own Royal Regiment Museum, Lancaster.]



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