These letters were written by my grandfather, Harry Lees Smith, to
his girlfriend, later fiancée, and in due course wife,
Dorothy Darlington, while he was journeying around the Dominions as a
traveller in cotton goods for Jaffé & Sons of
Manchester. The letters cover two trips, the first to South
Africa, Australia & New Zealand from June 1912 to May 1913, and the
second, much shorter, to Canada in October / November 1913.
There are also a couple of letters from the time in between
the two trips when Dorothy was away on holiday in Anglesey.
The correspondence is pretty
clearly not complete, with (for example) significant gaps in both
January and April 1913.
There is also one letter not from Harry, but from Orr, his travelling companion in New Zealand (word HTML).
Harry and Dorothy were eventually married on 30 July 1914, in Manchester Cathedral.
All letters are in both Word and HTML formats. The HTML versions
incorporate a few extra links; the Word versions have slightly better
formatting and the odd footnote. The dates given are those at the
head of the letters, but it is usually clear that the letters were
written over several days, with the dates being those on which they
were started. (NB the Berlin referred to below is a town in
Canada, subsequently renamed Kitchener, not the German capital).
back to main index
back to main index