We got Mr Lawler of this Town to order from you 3 months ago a new Plate for the "Infant Preservative", which we are very much in want of and we can advise that we have lost the sale of as many in consequence of not having received it 'ere this.  Many of our retail customers say they will not purchase any until they see the Show Bill, therefore may we request the favour of a line saying when you will be able to forward us it.
        Your early answer will oblige.
   
    Gentlemen,
         
            Yours respectfully,

                Atkinson & Barker.

Clearly another customer not overly happy with the service of this printer!

I have no understanding of who Mr Lawler was and all that I know of No. 1 Market Place, Manchester is that in May 1854 it was the office of The European & American Electric Type-Printing Telegraph Company and that I believe it is now a Public House.

The references to Atkinson & Barker and Infant Presevative have however survived the passage of time and I have discovered the following two adverts.  The first advert is from the Bolton Express Newspaper of 3rd July 1823.  It read as follows.

ATKINSON & BARKER'S
INFANT'S PRESERVATIVE.

THIS Medicine has been prepared and sold by the Proprietors near thirty years, during which time it has obtained so high a reputation, from recommendations alone, as to be used by almost every family in Lancashire and the neighbouring counties. The best possible eulogium on the medicine is the fact, that the sale is extended to more than fifteen thousand annually. The Infant's Preservative was originally intended as an antidote to those pernicious medicines for children which have laudanum for their chief and only active ingredient : its success has fully answered the intent. It is a pleasant, innocent, and efficacious carminative, intended as a preventative against, and a cure for, those complaints to which infants are liable, as affections of the bowels, difficult teething, convulsions, rickets, &c, and an admirable assistant to nature, during the progress of the hooping cough, the measles, and the cow-pock, or vaccine innoculation.

Please to observe, that each bottle of the genuine preparation has the signature of "ATKINSON and BARKER" on the label affixed to the bottle; any other not so prepared or signed is not the genuine Preservative, but a spurious imitation.

It may be had at their Shop, No 1, Market-place, Manchester; Mr. Gardner, and Mr. Yates, Booksellers, Bolton; Mr Sims, Mr. Hodgkinson, and Mrs. Holme, Druggists, also of Mr. J. Lomax, Advertiser-Office, Stockport; and by the most respectable medicine venders in the kingdom; in bottles at 1s 1 1/2d, 2s. 9d, and 4s. 6d each, duty included.

.................................

The second advert was included in the inside cover pages of a publication of Bleak House by Charles Dickens (Dickons is also reputed to have been a laudanum user) although I have no further details of the publication.

................................

THE BEST MEDICINE IN THE WORLD for INFANTS

AND YOUNG CHILDREN IS ATKINSON AND BARKER'S ROYAL INFANTS' PRESERVATIVE

Under the Patronage of the Queen.

The high and universal celebrity which this medicine continues to maintain for the prevention and cure of those disorders incident to infants; affording instant relief in convulsions, flatulency, affections of the bowels, difficult teething, the thrush, rickets, measles, hooping-cough, cow-pox, or vaccine inoculation, and may be given with safety immediately after birth. It is no misnomer cordial; no stupefactive, deadly narcotic!; but a veritable preserver of infants! Mothers would do well in always keeping it in the nursery. Many thousands of children are annually saved by this much-esteemed medicine, which is an immediate remedy, and the infants rather like it than otherwise.

Prepared only by ROBERT BARKER, Ollerenshaw Hall, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Derbyshire, late of Manchester, (Chemist to Her most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria), in bottles at 1s. 1½d., 2s. 9d., 4s. 6d., and 11s. each.

Sold by all druggists and medicine vendors throughout the United Kingdom.

CAUTION.

Observe the name of ATKINSON & BARKER, on the Government Stamp.

Established in the year 1793.

 

Laudanum is an alocholic tincture of opium.  Laudanum is also known as tincture of opium, opium tincture, or tinctura opii. 

Strangely I cannot imagine the Queen using or endorsing the use of Akinson & Barker's Infdant Preservative.

I also have the following information on file although I cannot recall the source.

"One of the major causes of infant mortality was the widespread practice of giving children narcotics, especially opium, to quieten them. At 1 penny an ounce laudanum was cheap enough - about the price of a pint of beer - and its sale was totally unregulated until late in the century. The use of opium was widespread both in town and country. In Manchester, according to one account, five out of six working-class families used it habitually. One Manchester druggist admitted selling a half gallon of Godfrey’s Cordial (the most popular mixture, it contained opium, treacle, water, and spices) and between five and six gallons of what was euphemistically called “quietness” every week. At mid-century there were at least ten proprietary brands, with Godfrey’s Cordial, Steedman’s Powder, and the grandly named Atkinson’s Royal Infants Preservative among the most popular."

As consequence of all of the above I have visions of numerous Lancashire Mill Workers drugging their children in order that the child would be "contented" whilst the parents worked very long hours.

Returning to the letter, it would appear that Atkinson & Barker had ordered a steel printed plate in order that that could order, issue - and likely re-order - advertising leaflets for Infant Preservative.  To have gone to the trouble of engaging this method of printing suggests to me that the leaflets were quite elaborate.  Unfortunately I have not uncovered any.