From B. J. Sulivan 3 December 1881
Bournemouth
Decr. 3/81
My dear Darwin
You have sent me 2s/ too much, and I have had 1£ extra besides.1 As they are always glad of clothes I will ask the secretary to lay out the 22s/ in warm clothing or serge for the boy when they next send out.
My youngest son when on his way to visit his agents at North German Ports & Riga saw a party of poor Fuegians exhibited in Zoological at Berlin about six I think men women & children: brought from Western T.D.F. by a German vessel they seem to have been shown almost like wild beasts.2 he wrote a long letter to the Society discribing them and urging that they should be got from their master & brought to England for the purpose of sending them back through our Mission station. The Socy sent me the letter which perhaps they will put in the next magazine.3 It is difficult to advise, but I have suggested that if they can get them when the owner has exhibited them at Hamburg,—to which place he was going,—they might keep them here long enough to teach them a little cleanliness, decent dress &c, and then send them out direct to Sandy Point to go to Ooshuaia.4 I think they must be from Fuegia’s tribe.5 I have no doubt friends of the mission would provide the necessary funds.
Believe me | very sincerely yours | B. J. Sulivan
Footnotes
Bibliography
Hazlewood, Nick. 2000. Savage. The life and times of Jemmy Button. London: Hodder and Stoughton.
Qureshi, Sadiah. 2011. Peoples on parade: exhibitions, empire, and anthropology in nineteenth-century Britain. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.
Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, ed. 1996. Freakery: cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body. New York: New York University Press.
Summary
BJS’s son has seen six Fuegians being exhibited in Berlin; BJS hopes that they might be bought from their master and returned to Tierra del Fuego.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-13527
- From
- Bartholomew James Sulivan
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Bournemouth
- Source of text
- DAR 177: 317
- Physical description
- ALS 3pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 13527,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-13527.xml