Objects

A card which, when folded four times, served as an envelope for a letter, with a red wax seal (broken, its fragments in two different places on the unfolded card) and a red circular stamp. Paper - handmade, ribbed. Inscription in black ink in the central folded part of the card, slanted, calligraphic but not very neat:

No 226 | Hospital Juderats || Do | Specific Council of the Jewish Hospital | City of Warsaw | in | Warsaw [word underlined as the only one on the envelope] || from | Specific Council of the Jewish| Hospital in Lublin

Inscription on a circular wax seal, with the emblem of the Russian empire in the centre: GUBERNIA LUBELSKA | SZPIT STAROZ W LUBLINIE || RADA SZCZEGÓŁOWA (LUBLIN GOVERNORATE | JEW HOSP IN LUBLIN || SPECIFIC COUNCIL)

On the stamp, in red ink: LUBLIN | 11

By one of the parts of the wax seal (after unfolding the card - top part) in pen: 3 (?)

In the passing light a filigree is visible, oriented towards the shorter edge of the sheet of paper, in the middle the date is visible: 18 | 37

We are sure that the letter was sent in a period not earlier than 1837, because - according to the note above - a filigree with this date is visible on the paper. Furthermore, it this year marked the introduction of the administrative division of the Kingdom of Poland into governorates. The Warsaw hospital to which the letter was addressed has certainly already existed at that time (since 1833), as was the Lublin hospital (its date of foundation is unknown to us, but in the 1839 'Obraz miasta Lublina', Seweryn Zenon Sierpiński mentioned that the hospital 'has existed for a long time', p. 168).

The paper is soiled in the areas where the paper was broken and that form the outer edges of the envelope when closed. At the right edge of the unfolded card there is an elongated horizontal ink stain, now maroon in colour.

Przemysław Kaniecki