Receipts and accounts

  • This material is held at
  • Reference
      GB 133 EGT/2/5
  • Former Reference
      GB 133 EGT/1/3/25-282.
  • Dates of Creation
      1713-1758
  • Physical Description
      248 items.

Scope and Content

This series primarily consists of a series of bills and receipts generated by Samuel Hill and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Hill (always known as Lady Betty), although it also includes some accounts of expenditure. Receipts issued to Lady Betty date from 1722 (the year of her marriage to Hill) to September 1727, shortly before her death from cholera late in the same year (she fell ill whilst visiting London to attend the coronation of George II in October 1727). The receipts of Samuel Hill date from 1713 to his death in 1758. The bills and receipts relate to a wide variety of items, reflecting almost every aspect of the Hills' day-to-day life. They include: housekeeping expenses - for household items, food and drink; payments to diverse craftsmen, such as ironmongers and saddlers; personal expenses of the Hills, for goods such as clothes and shoes (including a number of printed bill heads for purchases made in London shops); social expenses, such as trips to the opera; and doctors' and apothecaries' bills. Stationery and book bills are more frequently made out to Lady Betty, who in 1722 purchased amongst other items Pope's Homer [presumably his translation of the Iliad published in 1720], and in 1727 Swift's Gulliver's Travels, first published in the previous year. Also included are numerous receipts relating to the management of Samuel Hill's estates, such as the payment of labourers' wages, taxes, (eg. land tax, constables' leys, and payments to the poor), and rents paid by Hill. No. 130 is a subscription ticket dated 18 Feb 1730/31 issued to Samuel Hill by William Hogarth, acknowledging receipt of the first payment for 6 prints of A Harlot's Progress: this work was painted in c.1731, with a view to producing engravings which would be issued to subscribers, of which Samuel Hill, with his early-established interest in art, was clearly among the first. The ticket shows Hogarth's engraving, Boys Peeping at Nature, and is signed and sealed by the artist.

Arrangement

The bills are arranged in chronological order according to the date on which the account was settled, except for 2/5/248 (a land tax receipt) which is dated 7 Jan 1722/3, but which had become separated from the other receipts for a time and has been placed at the end of the sequence. Each item has been given a running number.