Sold on thesaleroom.com: appointing a new governor to Canada in 1760, Dr Lowther’s Royal Specific Drops and a Valentine that says it with shells

A sailor's shell valentine

There was a time when ‘sailor’s valentines’ such as this were thought to have been fashioned by talented lovesick seafarers while aboard ship using shells lovingly collected from foreign shores.

It is now understood that they were made by artisans in the West Indies as part of a thriving 19th century cottage industry.

Many were bought by British and American sailors as souvenirs or as gifts for loved ones.

This relatively large example measuring 15in (37cm) across was estimated at £300-500 in the August 6 auction at West Sussex saleroom Toovey’s. It sold via thesaleroom.com at £2600.

Appointing James Murray as Governor of Quebec

The royal commission signed by George III appointing James Murray ‘to be Governor of our Town of Quebec’ appeared at Canterbury Auction Galleries on August 1.

Also signed by ‘His Majesty's Command, W[illiam] Pitt’, it dates from 1760, the year after General Wolfe famously defeated the French forces on the Plains of Abraham.

In the document Murray is also given command ‘of all the Lines and Fortifications thereof, and of the Dependencies of the Government of Quebec...’

The manuscript drew dramatic competition against an estimate of £200-300, and it was eventually knocked down to a Canadian buyer via thesaleroom.com at £7500.

Murray remained as the military and civilian governor of Quebec for eight years. Opposing repressive measures against French Canadians he was later charged with partiality and, although exonerated, he left his post in 1768 and became governor of Minorca in 1774.

Dr Lowthers Royal Specific Drops

The bottle is moulded with the words Dr Lowther’s Royal Specific Drops in relief to one side and By The Kings Patent Nov 1757 to the other.

William Lowther’s medicines were produced from the mid-18^th century until around the 1780s, promising to cure various sorts of afflictions – including fits, nervous disorders, hysterics and wind.

One advert in The Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer in 1758 describes how a client from Clapham with “a most violent windy disorder” could not be helped by “two eminent physicians…until he took Dr Lowther’s Powders and Drops, the joint use of which in a short time entirely remov’d his complaints”.

This very rare bottle, in clear glass stained with its contents, came from the collection of the late Jack Webb (1923-2019), Camden Passage dealer and passionate collector of militaria and objet d’art.

It was estimated at just £100-150 at Dominic Winter in South Cerney on July 30 but found plenty of keen bottle collectors willing to pay much more. The hammer price was £3600.

Webb’s collection of cased photographs of British military subjects will offered as part of the Dominic Winter Photography sale in November.