Book Title: John McCaldin Loewenthal: Letters Home from a Victorian Commercial Traveller, 1889 – 1895

Book Description

This is a collection of travel letters written by the textile merchant John (Jack) McCaldin Loewenthal, known as JMcC, to his mother Jane at their home in Lennoxvale, Belfast, between 1889 and 1895. They were written during his journeys to South America and the West Indies, where he was securing commercial contracts, whilst representing the firm “Moore and Weinberg”, Linen and Jute traders, based in Dundee and Belfast, in which his father Julius Loewenthal was a senior partner. The reason these letters survived for posterity is that he had specifically asked his mother to keep them as a record of his travels, for him to look back on after his return home to Belfast. The letters are a diary-like account of his travels and travel impressions, also containing little anecdotes, as well as more personal interactions with his mother to do with family and friends in Belfast and Dundee, as well as social chit chat. They were part of a regular correspondence between him and Jane.