Epistolary Form in the Letters from Charles Bertram to William Stukeley

Olivia Flynn ORCID iD icon https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1253-4151

Olivia Flynn was one of two volunteers who worked with Electronic Enlightenment and Bodleian colleagues to catalogue, image, transcribe, and annotate a selection of letters between antiquarians Charles Bertram and William Stukeley, supported by the UNIQ+ programme. For more information on the programme, and our next UNIQ+ project in summer 2025, “Slave Trade and Plantation Management: The Barham Papers (1792–1820)”, please visit UNIQ+ Projects 2025 where full details can be found under ‘Digital Humanities’.

Using the collection of 32 letters written by the literary forger Charles Julius Bertram to the Antiquarian William Stukeley between 1747 and 1763 as a case study, I will be exploring the different sub-genres of letters. The purpose and subject matter of letters of the eighteenth century vary greatly, according to purpose and style of the letter. They included the consolation letter, familial letters, business letters, petitions, political missives, public letters to newspapers and periodicals and of course, love letters.

This blogpost will be focusing on the introductory letter and often overlooked, the medical diagnosis letter.

Letters of Introduction and their relation, the letter of Recommendation, were part of the social communication in the eighteenth century. Their purpose was clear; social networking, personal and business connections, and most importantly, to overcome rank and class. Lower rank correspondents would introduce themselves to higher-rank individuals with the intention to make a social connection via correspondence or a physical introduction. They often enclosed a visiting card. Letters of Introduction were highly structured, and formal.

In 1746, the aspiring antiquarian Charles Bertram wrote to the well-established historian and antiquarian William Stukeley. In this letter, Bertram introduced himself as a Professor of the English tongue (somewhat of an embellishment as at the time, he was a tutor at the Royal Marine Academy in Copenhagen). Bertram floods Stukeley with compliments and asks to start a correspondence in his letter of introduction:

Nemo sine crimine vivit, says the great Horace; and mine is to love Antiquities, a fault which in itself would have been pardoned, by you Great Sir who has made yourself so beloved, by the cultivating them; had it not been accompanied with this bold and unparaled intrusion of my Self, into your Acquaintance, without having before made my Person known to you, by my Merit; but as I’ve nothing in this Case to plead for me, but your Good Nature alone; so seeing my boldness is founded on the Love to learning, I trust that Advocate, will not be wanting.

Charles Bertram to William Stukeley, 23 August 1746

To a modern reader, Bertram seemed very much servile and hyperbolic. However, penning a letter to an established historian would require Bertram to show formal respect in tone and structure of the letter, in his salutation and addresses. The eighteenth-century antiquarian world was small, and correspondence connected professional colleagues across Europe to find out about each other’s research and share knowledge. Furthermore, correspondences also permitted the exchange of intellectual ideas and the circulation of manuscripts – a republic of letters.

When a young, aspiring scholar like Bertram wrote to a well-established, published author, he would have been expected to adhere a specific and highly formalised linguistic register of politeness and deference. Bertram was clearly successful to attract Stukeley’s attention as their correspondence lasted over sixteen years.

In the first years of their correspondence, Bertram addresses Stukeley by the formal, official titles ‘Reverand Sir’, ‘Reverend Dr Stukeley’ and ‘Dr’. Over time, these terms of address become more intimate ‘Dear friend’ and ‘My Dearest Friend and Benefactor’, showing how their initial relationship between established scholar and petitioner developed into an (academic) friendship.

But their relationship was also defined by another aspect. In addition to a keen antiquarian, William Stukeley was also a physician. After a short career in Law, he turned to medicine in 1709 when he studied at St Thomas’ Hospital, Southwark, before working as a general practitioner in Boston, Lincolnshire. After a doctorate in medicine in 1719, Stukeley joined the London College of Physicians in 1720.

In his letter of the 15th of October 1748, (MS Eng. lett. b. 2, folios 18–19) Bertram wrote to Stukeley to request instruction on how to treat gout. This was a specialism of Stuckeley who wrote a pamphlet on gout in 1735. Bertram may have written to Stukeley for several reasons: it may have been a cheaper alternative to consulting with a Physician, or he may have been seeking a second opinion, or it may have been because Stukeley published literature on gout treatments in 1735.

It was a common practice to send consultation letters to physicians, particularly to renowned ones. Equivalent to today’s telephone appointments with a GP, eighteenth century patients could opt to consult their doctor by post. Physical examinations were not considered essential by medical professionals until the following century so epistolary consultations sufficed. A doctor’s visit and consultation letter were both priced at one guinea each, such pricing suggests a consultation letter may have possessed the same medical value as an in-person consultation. Medicine by post, offered many advantages, it was convenient for both parties and patients could easily seek a second opinion.1

Stukeley published the pamphlet Of The Gout (1735), in which he mentions a letter he published a year before on the cure of gout. 2 He wrote, ‘I saw no occasion to alter any thing in the letter which I publish’d last year, because there were but very few copies of it printed; as it is a necessary part of this discourse I reprinted it, that they may be bound together.’ 3 The letter to Hans Sloan then formed Part I of the pamphlet. In the second part, Stukeley cites a letter from a ‘Gentleman in England to his friend in Dublin’ and recommends diagnosis by correspondence, ‘before you meddle with the oils [treatment for gout], write to your Doctor your age, and all the symptoms attending your gout, and he will soon return to you an answer’. 4Medical consultation letters were integrated into medical pamphlets and literature to educate the public but also other professionals on medical discoveries and treatments. Patients, doctors and other professionals again become connected via a network of correspondences and exchanges.

Medicine by letter strays far from today’s patient confidentiality that is widely practised by GPs and medical professionals. The publication of once private letters in medical pamphlets and letter manuals appears as an invasion of privacy, by twenty-first century standards. However, privacy (especially in terms of private, encrypted digital communications) is a relatively modern concept. Due to the nature of letters, they were not a confidential, private means of communication. The number of individuals to handle a single letter were significant, especially for a letter sent overseas such as Bertram’s letters sent to Stukeley in England. Bertram most likely delivered his letters to his local post office in Copenhagen, which would then by transported by horse or cart to an international port or harbour. The letter would travel overseas in a merchant or government vessel and arrive in England to be processed through the English postal service. At any point in this long process could a letter be intercepted and read by an unintended readers. Thus, the description of seemingly private medical symptoms and ailments became the food for public and medical research.

To conclude, by using the Bertram- Stukeley correspondence as case study, the significance of letters in this period can be uncovered. Bertram’s first letter sent in 1747 illustrates the networking potential of a letter of introduction. Letters connected scholars across and between nations sparking intellectual exchanges and debates. Consultations by post meant patients had access to medical specialists through remote means, improving access to medical care. The varied role of letters in the eighteenth-century deserves greater attention and further study to enrich our understanding of this period’s cultural and social history.

  1. See Wayne Wild, Medicine by Post: The Changing Voice of Illness in Eighteenth-Century British Consultation Letters and Literature (Brill, 2006).
  2. W. Stukeley, A letter to Sir Hans Sloan Bart., about the cure of the gout by oyls externally apply’d , (London, 1733).
  3. W. Stukeley, A treatise of the cause and cure of the gout. (London, 1733), p. 4.
  4. Ibid, pp. 74–75.


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