To the Editor of the London Chronicle (Sunday Evening, November 4, 1759)

178An hour or two ago I was informed that a letter is inserted in your yesterday's paper,

On Tuesday, October 16 last, I made a collection at the New Room in Bristol for the French prisoners confined at Knowle. The money contributed then, and the next day, was about three and twenty pounds. I judged it best to lay this out in shirts and waistcoats, and accordingly bought, of Mr. Zephaniah Fry, in the Castle, check shirts and woollen cloth to the amount of eight pounds, ten shillings and sixpence, and of Mrs. Sarah Coole in Wine Street, check linen to the amount of five pounds, seventeen shillings. The linen was immediately delivered out, partly to two or three poor women, who were to make them at the common price, partly to others, who were willing to make them for nothing; the woollen to John Heath in Castle Ditch, who agreed to make the waistcoats at twenty-one pence each, and to whom (being poor) I advanced five shillings. The money remaining I lodged in the hands of Mr. James Ireland of Horse Street, as he speaks French readily, and Mr. John Salter, of Badminster, who had been with me both at the prison and the hospital. I directed these 1) to give a waistcoat and two shirts to every one who was remanded from the hospital to the prison, and to keep about half the clothes which our money would procure, to be thus bestowed from time to time; 2) to dispose of the other half in the prison to those whom they should judge most needy and most deserving.