Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine
Title
Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine
Description
Writes of sorting out family financial and tax issues for her mother. Mentions bomb damage to Westminster Abbey and arrival of his letters. Says she is sending parcels to Jurby.
Creator
Date
1941-08-28
Temporal Coverage
Spatial Coverage
Language
Format
Four page handwritten letter
Publisher
Rights
This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.
Contributor
Identifier
EValentineUMValentineJRM410828
Transcription
Start of transcription
[underlined] No 12 [/underlined] (correct me if I’m wrong)
Lido
August 28th
Darling Johnny,
We had letters from Mummy yesterday telling us about the overdraft which she mentioned in her cable the other day, & as I was rather worried about it I went up to Grindlays today to discuss the business with them. The position seems to be as follows:- Mother (or Daddy, as it actually is) get £400 a year interest on her provident fund investment, which she understood was tax free. She also has £160 p.a. overseas pay. Out of this £560 she pays £420 to us in allowances (£35 a month) & the rest covers taxes, insurances, rates etc. The snag now in that her investment is [underlined] not [/underlined] tax free, at least it is taxed at source & then she gets it back as rebate months later. SO while she is standing out of
[page break]
the income tax she only gets £200 from it, & this means that she is about £100 overdrawn. Just at the moment she has been paid her rebate & so is in funds.
It seems to me a pretty poor show that she should be regularly overdrawn at the bank while my allowance is piling up in Nat. Sav. Certs. & seems to me that the best thing would be for me to pay the rates & taxes out of the said allowance & the insurance premiums too as far as I can. What do you think about it? Mother was afraid that perhaps she was being charged income tax, in spite of the original assurances to the contrary, because she was now paying rates on Lido & might therefore rank as a
[page break]
householder in this country, or something of that sort. But the man at Grindlays assured me that she has to pay tax in any case but gets it refunded eventually. Do you think Mother’s hypothesis could be correct? Of course in the end it balances out alright, her income from her investment & overseas pay will cover all her commitments here, but only at the cost of being heavily overdrawn for a large part of the year. Apparently they charge 5% for overdrafts, so its not crushing. Do you think I had better return my allowance to them, or shall I pay the rates out of it? Or what? Of course we can go on as we are, & then she gets a nice little lump sum when she arrives home. Do tell me what I ought to do.
[page break]
I popped into Westminster Abbey while I was there & an awfully nice verger took me into the cloister, which is closed to the general public, & showed the bomb-damage to the deanery & school buildings too – It’s pretty bad round them, but the Abbey itself is only damaged in the roof.
Your letter No 17 of 25th arrived to time – glad to hear you have at least got a bed. And I hope the flea doesn’t pester you any more! They certainly are awful things.
I have sent 2 parcels recently both to Jurby – I hope they’ve arrived. Yesterday’s letter was an NSDN.
I have been invited to a party!! All the Nat. Savings Group secretaries are to foregather at The Refectory where the Mayor & Corporation will probably hold forth. It should be fun if its not [underlined] too [/underlined] boring.
Nancy Blaikley has produced a daughter, Sheilagh Fiona! I must write today. She was born on 25th Aug. David will be proud, it’s the first girl baby in the family.
All my love to my dearest one from Frances – Ursula.
[underlined] No 12 [/underlined] (correct me if I’m wrong)
Lido
August 28th
Darling Johnny,
We had letters from Mummy yesterday telling us about the overdraft which she mentioned in her cable the other day, & as I was rather worried about it I went up to Grindlays today to discuss the business with them. The position seems to be as follows:- Mother (or Daddy, as it actually is) get £400 a year interest on her provident fund investment, which she understood was tax free. She also has £160 p.a. overseas pay. Out of this £560 she pays £420 to us in allowances (£35 a month) & the rest covers taxes, insurances, rates etc. The snag now in that her investment is [underlined] not [/underlined] tax free, at least it is taxed at source & then she gets it back as rebate months later. SO while she is standing out of
[page break]
the income tax she only gets £200 from it, & this means that she is about £100 overdrawn. Just at the moment she has been paid her rebate & so is in funds.
It seems to me a pretty poor show that she should be regularly overdrawn at the bank while my allowance is piling up in Nat. Sav. Certs. & seems to me that the best thing would be for me to pay the rates & taxes out of the said allowance & the insurance premiums too as far as I can. What do you think about it? Mother was afraid that perhaps she was being charged income tax, in spite of the original assurances to the contrary, because she was now paying rates on Lido & might therefore rank as a
[page break]
householder in this country, or something of that sort. But the man at Grindlays assured me that she has to pay tax in any case but gets it refunded eventually. Do you think Mother’s hypothesis could be correct? Of course in the end it balances out alright, her income from her investment & overseas pay will cover all her commitments here, but only at the cost of being heavily overdrawn for a large part of the year. Apparently they charge 5% for overdrafts, so its not crushing. Do you think I had better return my allowance to them, or shall I pay the rates out of it? Or what? Of course we can go on as we are, & then she gets a nice little lump sum when she arrives home. Do tell me what I ought to do.
[page break]
I popped into Westminster Abbey while I was there & an awfully nice verger took me into the cloister, which is closed to the general public, & showed the bomb-damage to the deanery & school buildings too – It’s pretty bad round them, but the Abbey itself is only damaged in the roof.
Your letter No 17 of 25th arrived to time – glad to hear you have at least got a bed. And I hope the flea doesn’t pester you any more! They certainly are awful things.
I have sent 2 parcels recently both to Jurby – I hope they’ve arrived. Yesterday’s letter was an NSDN.
I have been invited to a party!! All the Nat. Savings Group secretaries are to foregather at The Refectory where the Mayor & Corporation will probably hold forth. It should be fun if its not [underlined] too [/underlined] boring.
Nancy Blaikley has produced a daughter, Sheilagh Fiona! I must write today. She was born on 25th Aug. David will be proud, it’s the first girl baby in the family.
All my love to my dearest one from Frances – Ursula.
Collection
Citation
Ursula Valentine, “Letter from Ursula Valentine to her husband John Valentine,” IBCC Digital Archive, accessed April 20, 2024, https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/collections/document/19617.
Item Relations
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