Description

Admin History:

It is unclear who used the Housekeeper's Account Book (U DX64/1) as there is no name or address provided.

The commonplace book (U DX64/2) was endorsed in 1892 by Frederick William Mills who described himself as Sarah Mills's 'surviving executor', making him her son or possibly grandson. According to the biographical information he provides, Sarah Mills was born Sarah Caroline Buthicar on 27 September 1789. She was the daughter of the Reverend James Buthicar of Harrow on the Hill, who was French master at Harrow School. She probably received the commonplace book on her twentieth birthday as she has endorsed the front of the book with a starting date of 27 September 1809. She married Frederick Russell Mills of the Home Office and they lived in St John's Wood, London. The book ends abruptly with a poem called 'Misery':

'Yet still thy features won that light

Which fled not with the breath

And life ne'er looked more purely bright

Than in this smile of death.'

According to Frederick William Mills the commonplace book ceases at the time when Sarah Mills's third child, Anna Maria Pope, died at the age of 29. Frederick Russell Mills died in 1861 and Sarah Mills died in 1879.

Description:

A small collection containing a printed Housekeeper's Account Book, which was rarely used, and a notebook, later diary, of Sarah Caroline Buthicar.