Letters received Apr. - Aug. 1908, O - R, 1"., 1908 - 1908

This group contains the bulk of the inward letters in the collection, principally handwritten and some typewritten letters, together with some telegrams, and a guard book of questions handed in at political meetings. The other inward letters in the collection have been left in their natural groups in Series 3, 5 and 6. The material collated in this series for the preliminary inventory in 1962 consisted of the following: four guard books containing correspondence items; a number of packets of letters each from specific persons; the remnant of an alphabetic correspondence file for the years 1910-11 consisting of the letters S to Y only; several packets of loose letters. Except for the guard books and the alphabetic sequence this group was sorted chronologically by days, and the loose letters arranged into convenient units by years. The record items in the series are listed by year of first entry.

At the time when this inventory was first prepared, it was obvious that the balance of the alphabetic sequence for the ministerial period 1906-11 was missing. In 1975 the missing material was found among the administration records in the basement of the Old Arts Building of the University. In 1976 the S to Y sequence already mentioned was combined wiht the ten feet of additional material and thus incorporated in Series 2, necessitating the revision of this section of the Inventory. With this addition, a complete run of inward correspondence for the ministerial period was re-established.

The letters received by Fowlds cover the period 1878 to 1934, that is, from his eighteenth year until his death. Those that were received by Mr G. M. Fowlds between 1934 and 1959 as tributes to or thanks for information about his father are appended at the end of the series. The material contained in this series covers a wide variety of subjects and activities, including communications from family, friends, acquaintances and associates in Scotland, England, South Africa, the United States and New Zealand, and refers to practically the whole of his adult life, and to private, social and political activities. It includes a large number of letters from prominent people whom Fowlds met or corresponded with in the course of a long public life. The content to the letters varies considerably, ranging from mere greetings or acknowledgments to opinions upon general political and social matters, and communicatoins about the day-to-day business of the Ministry and the Liberal party. Honorifics from exalted persons were given special treatment by being mounted in one of the guard books.

The alphabetic sequences of the years of office comprise the inward letters and telegrams and drafts of outward telegrams which appear to have been lodged in box files with roughly six months rests. The six years of public office 1906-11 are therefore represented by thirteen alphabetic sequences. It is estimated that this portion of the series represents something like 24,000 items compared with less than 1000 items in the rest of the series. This mass of material was accumulated during the period when Fowlds was a minister of the Crown with the portfolios of Education and Public Health. Whilst there are some family and personal communications, the bulk of the material refers to matters connected with his public life - the Liberal Party, his electorate of Grey Lynn, his communicatoins with the Prime Minister and other ministers, and with the principal officers of his departments (G. Hogben, Inspector-General of Schools and Secretary of Education; Dr J. M. Mason, Chief Health Officer; Dr T. H. A. Valintine, Inspector-General of Hospitals, and, from 1910, Chief Health Officer; Dr F. Hay, Inspector-General of Mental Hospitals) and to the multifarious problems of individuals, organisations, and public bodies to which a minister is subjected. These include requests for testimonials, donations, subscriptions, appointments, speeches, introductions, favours, and a variety of other matters. Thus the minutiae of the daily business of a minister of the Crown is well represented here, complementing the outward letters of Series 1. It is frequently possible to trace the action that was taken with regard to an item, either from the annotations alone, from the adjoining draft of a telegram, or by reference to the copies of outward letters in the letter books of Series 1.