An album of nearly four hundred holograph and autograph letters, with some accounts and other papers, 1846-1856, of the Committee of Visitors of the United Lunatic Asylum for the counties of Cardigan, Carmarthen, Glamorgan, and Pembroke (to be established under the provisions of Act 8 & 9 Victoria, c. 126). Almost all of the letters are addressed to the clerk of the Committee, namely Thomas Dalton, Cardiff, who was Clerk of the Peace for Glamorgan, and the writers include John Nicholl, M.P., Merthyr-mawr, etc.; [Sir] Denis Le Marchant, Whitehall [Under-Secretary to the Hom Department]; Walter Coffin, Llandaff, etc.; George Child-Villiers, 5th earl of Jersey; [Colonel] N. Cameron, London, etc.; and [Sir] George Tyler, M.P. The majority of the letters relate to negotiations for the purchase, as a site for the lunatic asylum, of part of the Danygraig estate near Swansea in the possession of Lord Jersey and in the occupation of Col. Cameron. Towards the beginning of the volume are orders and/or resolutions of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and/or the provisional county committees of Justices of the Peace for the counties of Pembroke, Monmouth, Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Glamorgan, the county borough of Carmarthen, and the town and county of Haverfordwest, 1846-1848; printed minutes of the united Committee of Visitors of the proposed asylum, 1848-1849; and the opinion, 1849, of Arthur Morgan, Equitable Assurance Office [London], on the value of the fee simple of the proposed site. Inset are statements of accounts due to Edmd. Scott Barber, civil engineer and surveyor, 1849-1852 (with a covering letter to Thomas Dalton, 1853), and to Thomas Dalton, 1853-1854; resolutions of the Courts of Quarter Sessions for the counties of Glamorgan and Cardigan, 1855-1856; a resolution of the Committee of Visitors, 1855, endorsed with the approval of [Sir] George Grey, Home Secretary; and draft minutes of the Committee of Visitors, 1856.
