{"id":633,"date":"2018-06-13T17:47:16","date_gmt":"2018-06-13T16:47:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=633"},"modified":"2018-06-15T12:51:35","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T11:51:35","slug":"the-value-of-receipts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/?p=633","title":{"rendered":"The value of receipts"},"content":{"rendered":"

William Macintosh was an inveterate keeper of bills, invoices, and receipts. These ephemeral items are present in great abundance in his archive, but it is often difficult to determine their significance and evidential value given their overwhelming number\u2014it is tricky, in that sense, to see the wood for the trees. On one level, these items offer an interesting insight into what Macintosh (and his family) consumed\u2014food, fabric, books, stationery, furniture, wine, jewellery, medicine, etc.\u2014and how much was spent. More prosaically, however, they are also often helpful in placing Macintosh in time and space (given how peripatetic he was, it is useful to know for sure where he was at a particular time).<\/p>\n

\"Bill<\/a>

Bill from William Nicoll, 5 February 1770.<\/p><\/div>\n

As I was photographing these items today (they number in the hundreds) one bill stood out: a 1770 invoice from the London bookseller and publisher, William Nicoll, for what appears to be six calf-bound copies of the pamphlet\u00a0Audi Alteram Partem<\/em> (1770). As I have written before<\/a>, there is reason to believe Macintosh was one of the anonymous authors of that work. While this bill is clearly not proof of authorship, it is circumstantially suggestive and at the very least demonstrates that Macintosh owned<\/em> a copy (well, several copies) of the pamphlet. Those six pamphlets, purchased then for \u00a31 4s., would be worth about $4,500 today (if current prices<\/a> are a guide).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

William Macintosh was an inveterate keeper of bills, invoices, and receipts. These ephemeral items are present in great abundance in his archive, but it is often difficult to determine their significance and evidential value given their overwhelming number\u2014it is tricky, in that sense, to see the wood for the trees. On one level, these items […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":639,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions\/639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inneskeighren.com\/williammacintosh\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}