| Description | These files of correspondence contain letters from Sir Francis Galton to Frederick Smith, and chiefly relate to work the two men were carrying out regarding a consistent method of measuring horses from photographs. During this period, Smith was working at the Woolwich Remount Depot, and was preparing a paper titled 'Relation between the Weight of a Horse and its Weight-carrying Power'. It seems that Smith intended to have this paper presented at the Royal Society, but it was eventually published in the Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics in 1899. [A reprint of this article can be found at FS/2/3/1/3]. Galton was preparing an article titled 'Photographic Measurement of Horses and other animals', published in 'Nature' in 1898, and a copy of this article is catalogued at FS/3/3/2/6.
There are no letters from Smith to Galton found in this collection. Galton's notepaper all has a black border, indicating a recent death, and this is assumed to be for Galton's wife, Louisa Jane Butler, who died in 1897. |