Sep 28, 2017 - Sale 2455

Sale 2455 - Lot 25

Price Realized: $ 6,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(AMERICAN REVOLUTION--1778.) Brinley, George. An unrecorded broadside setting the prices for forage in occupied New York. Letterpress broadside, 12 1/4 x 8 1/4 inches, signed in type as Commissary of Forage; untrimmed, folds, foxing and moderate dampstaining. New York: [James Rivington?], 9 December 1778
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Additional Details

A previously unknown broadside demonstrating the heavy-handed tactics of the British in New York. "The Commander in Chief having taken into consideration the Price of Forage, does not think it adequate to other Articles, and is pleased to Order, that from and after the above Date, the following prices should be Paid until further Orders." Prices are given for upland hay, salt hay, straw, Indian corn, and oats plus the cost of carting. It concludes: "He has allowed these ample Prices, that no further delay may be made by the Farmers in bringing in all the Hay they have, both Fresh and Salt, to the most contiguous Magazines, where they will receive Certificates for the Quantity delivered, which will be Paid at the Forage Office in New-York, and has directed me to acquaint them, that any Person that is found Delinquent after this Notice, will have their Forage taken, and no Receipts given." In other words. farmers were given the choice of selling all their hay to the British Army for bargain prices--or having it confiscated for no price at all.
The printer of this broadside is not named, but all other official New York imprints recorded by Evans for 1778 were printed by Rivington. Not in Evans or ESTC, and apparently unrecorded.