This is a letter sent by my great-great-grandad;
1867 - John Dean's petition to Trinity House:
"Gentlemen, I was disable from going to sea any more owing to a contraction of the left hand from an abscess & contraction of the guiders in 1841, I was put on Quarterly pay at the Trinity House at Hull in 1842 on the 18-shilling list per quarter for a few years but owing to getting on has an Extra Tide waiter in H.M. Customs at Hull & making ten shillings per week my Trinity pay was stopped only getting the gift of coals & five shillings in the winter twice & three times a year, Gentlemen, having been in the Customs 26 years & the Established Class been filled up the Honorable Board gave me a small pension of 15.5.11 per year which only amounts to twopence halfpenny a head, per day four of us that his my wife & two children under the age of thirteen. I made application to the Trinity House for my pension to be restored to me but was told that my pension was sufficient from the Customs & that I could not have my pension back, Gentlemen I think a seaman paying into the Trinity House for a number of years his shilling per month from the port of Hull for disabled seamen to have a pension at Trinity House, for to been to be continued for a few years & then stopped not to be returned any more his a Very Great Shame."
And we think these were the good old days???
