SATURDAY 7th JANUARY 1888

Morning - Writing letter for Payne and to see Sergeant Ward re getting license for Payne to sell liquors at Gorsty Cote sale on Tuesday.

Afternoon - To Alton, arranged with Mrs Amsworth to engage the room at the Shrewsbury Arms Hotel for 15/- they to find seats and piano for lecture to be held on Monday January 23 1888.

Called on Charlesworth at Gorsty Cote and he says he is afraid he will not be able to get away before the next steamer after the Rimulaka.

Evening - Went to Walton Villa and found dad unable to move off his back. Mother has been putting hot Cayenne pads on his back and it gave him much pain til they were taken off. They will keep on pottering(?) with him till too late. I have told them from the first that physic will not cure him. But they just(?) laugh about the water cure. Now he is getting too weak. If I had been allowed full play at first when he had strength to help me, he would have been better now. I should have thought that Polly's death would have given them enough of Allopathic doctors and their drugs.

John Hodgkiss over. He says he pays rent 16/- an acre for the farm he holds near Horton.

Notes:
1) John Hodgkiss was John's uncle, married to his mother's sister Ursula Yardley. They were from Horton, near Leek.
2) Allopathic medicine
3) Water cure
4) Polly was John's sister Mary Alcock, who died in 1879, aged 23.