This work only exists because John and Eliza Laurie kept the letters they received from their sons. If their sons had also kept theirs, we might now have both sides of the correspondence.
The collection passed to their eldest son, John W Laurie, in Canada. Between 1936 and 1955, his children Meta and Kenrick generously sent batches of them to Peter G Laurie’s son Kenneth and daughter Mabel; to Julius’ widow Gwen; and to Gwen’s son Waulter. However this process was rather haphazard, with the result that by no means all the letters ended up with the direct descendants of the respective writers.
So it is due to the goodwill of other family members finding themselves in possession of various portions that first, the letters have now been more appropriately redistributed, and secondly, all the known letters have been lent for transcription and inclusion in this edition. They are J Michael Laurie and his sister, Sandra Appleton (John W Laurie’s great grandson and granddaughter) and Michael A C Laurie (Peter G Laurie’s great grandson).
Exceptions however were 5 letters from John (February 1862 – August 1863) and 7 letters from Julius (April 1860 – November 1861) which were deposited with the National Archives of Canada in 1993 by Mr Sheldon Godfrey, reportedly after rescue from a waste skip. Thanks to Library and Archives Canada for providing copies.
Thanks also to Sir David Roche (Julius’ great grandson) for his portrait of Julius on the Home page; to Hugh Dyson-Laurie (Julius’ grandson) for the oil portrait of Julius; and to Michael A C Laurie for the photographs (from Peter G Laurie’s photograph album) of John and Eliza Laurie and their eight children which appear in 4 Family Background.
Much of the family background and information about the life of Sir Peter Laurie was provided by Peter G Laurie’s ‘Sir Peter Laurie – A Family Memoir’, published in 1901, and ‘The Journal of Sir Peter Laurie’ published by The Saddlers’ Company in 1985.
In 1992, details of Julius’ military career were kindly provided by Colonel R K May, then Curator of The Regimental Museum of the Border Regiment and The King’s Own Royal Border Regiment in Carlisle: more recently from Mr Stuart Eastwood, late Curator of Cumbria's Museum of Military Life. Assistance also came from The North Devon Athenaeum (about John Laurie as Barnstaple’s MP) and The National Archives, Kew (Post Office Directories and Hart’s Army Lists). Lt. Gen. Jonathon Riley kindly helped with regimental details and Tom Muir of Crimean War Research Society provided details of Midshipman Arthur Wilson, an even younger participant in the Crimean War than Julius.
Finally, I gratefully record the skill and patience of my wife, Shirley, who is largely responsible for taming the word processing software sufficiently to persuade it to produce Irregular Correspondence in the form in which you find it; to Noël Owen, great granddaughter of Mary Laurie, for her meticulous proof-reading; to Chris Woffenden for finding errors which even Noël missed and to my younger daughter Penny for guiding me in the dark arts of website design.