The Charles Dickens Letters Project

To WILLIAM CULLENFORD,1 27 APRIL 1853

Text from facsimile in CRN Auctions online catalogue, June 2021.

Tavistock House
Twenty Seventh April, 1853.

Dear Mr Cullenford,
    I will be at the National Debt office2 tomorrow afternoon at half past two exactly, if you will meet me there.3

        Faithfully Yours

        CHARLES DICKENS

• 1. William Cullenford (1797-1874), actor. First appeared in London at the Adelphi 1836 as Wharton in The Christening; acted chiefly at the Adelphi and the Haymarket until his retirement in 1864. A founder of the General Theatrical Fund, a pension fund for retired actors which, according to CD (who served as the organisation's first chairman), 'embraces all sorts and conditions of actors from the first' (To Edward Bulwer Lytton, in Pilgrim Letters 5, p. 234). Cullenford served as the fund's secretary from its foundation in 1839 until his death.
• 2. The Commissioners for the Reduction of the National Debt were established by the National Debt Reduction Act 1786 to make more effectual application of the sinking fund to the reduction of the national debt. The six commissioners so appointed were the speaker of the House of Commons, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, the Accountant General of the Court of Chancery (now the Accountant General of the Supreme Court), along with the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England. A seventh commissioner, the Chief Baron of the Court of the Exchequer, was added in 1808 and in 1881, following the abolition of that office, was replaced by the Lord Chief Justice of England. The Commissioners acquired further responsibilities under various acts relating to life annuities and under the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. It is possible that CD and Cullenford met the Commissioners to petition on behalf of an actor in financial difficulties. CD was later involved with the Office of National Debt, in order to obtain an annuity for his sister Laetitia, after the death of her husband, Henry Austin, on 9 Oct 1861; see Pilgrim Letters 10, pp. 119-20.
  
• 3. There was a payment of 4 guineas to Cullenford from CD's bank account, dated 29 April 1853 (MS Messrs Coutts).