Crossed letter (Bishop Hills Collection, Text 57)
The item featured in this month’s post is unusual, not in content, but in the way it was written. This is an example of a crossed letter, a rare and exciting find in the archives. Letter writers in the 19th century would use this technique of cross-writing or cross-hatching to save on limited stationery and high postage costs, without compromising on letter length. A writer would fill a page with text in one direction, then rotate the paper 90 degrees and continue writing across the original lines, resulting in a dense block of handwritten text. This letter is from the Bishop Hills collection. It is addressed to an unnamed person in British Columbia from St. Augustine, Canterbury, in the year 1860.
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