Catalogue description Public Record Office: Modern Records Department: Unpublished and Unfinished Texts, Calendars and Finding Aids

In the mid-nineteenth century the PRO and the Home Office began work on a series of published calendars of State Papers Domestic, later Home Office papers, which was intended to cover the entire period 1760-1830. Work was started on the papers of the 1760s and early 1770s, and simultaneously on those for the years 1801-1803.

By 1876, calendaring was completed for 1760-1768, and was in an advanced state for 1769-1771; this material, together with further calendars covering 1772-75, were eventually published by HMSO as Calendar of Home Office Papers, George III (4 vols, 1878-1899).

As early as 1873 Atkins had completed work on 1801 and 1802, and had almost completed 1803. His method of working appears to have been to calendar each series of correspondence, papers and entry books separately, then to cut and paste the resulting calendars into a single chronological sequence for the year.

It is possible to determine the subsequent course of events from correspondence now preserved in PRO 1/41. In a letter to Hardy, 31 March 1876, Atkins explained that the calendars for 1801 and 1802 would have gone to press soon after completion but for the Home Office's concern about publication of certain material relating to Ireland in 1801. Earlier in the same month, Atkins had noted at the beginning of his calendar of 1801 records that certain pages relating to Ireland had been sent to the Home Secretary in 1874, and had not yet been returned (ZBOX 2/1). They are absent from the surviving manuscript.

On 21 June 1876, Hardy wrote to the Home Office, expressing some concern about the advisability of publishing the 1801-1803 material. A reply on behalf of the Home Secretary, dated 3 October 1876, approved publication of the 1760s and 1770s material, but requested that until the calendars for the period 1760 to 1800 had been published (presumably in full), the Deputy Keeper would 'suspend the printing of the Calendar... from 1800 to 1830'. In the event, no calendars of Home Office papers later than 1775 have ever been published.