| Description | This correspondence comprises letters written by Ethel Chamberlain to her father, Joseph Chamberlain, and stepmother, Mary Endicott Chamberlain, during the period 1898 to 1904, including two letters written before her marriage to Lionel Richards, but with the majority dating from after her marriage and the birth of her daughter, Hilda Mary. There is also one letter in this sequence from Lionel Richards to Mary Endicott Chamberlain, written before his engagement to Ethel. Most of the letters focus on Ethel's health and the wellbeing and development of Hilda Mary, but the earliest letter, written in 1898, contains details about one of her visits to Germany to stay with the Siemens family, and there is also a letter to Mary Endicott Chamberlain, written in 1899, while Ethel and her half sister, Beatrice, were staying in Dublin as guests of the Chief Secretary.
The other sequence of letters dates largely from the days following Ethel's death in January 1905 and consist primarily of letters of sympathy to Lionel Richards from members of the Chamberlain family, and two of his replies, but includes one letter from Joseph Chamberlain to his daughter written in relation to her decision to spend the winter in Adelboden in Switzerland in an attempt to recover from tuberculosis, and papers associated with Ethel's death and burial at Adelboden
Internal evidence suggests that this correspondence was kept together by Ethel's daughter, Hilda Mary Richards, and there are also a small number of apparently unconnected picture postcards described at BC/C/2 which were probably given to her |