Approximately a third of this volume consists of printed information, the diary being a 'Letts's Office Diary and Almanac' (for 1879). At the beginning of the handwritten part of the volume there is a list of places which Sophia Turle visited in Europe from July to December 1879, giving the number of nights spent there (there are many pressed flowers and leaves in this volume which are presumed to have been collected during this trip). Diary descriptions of this European tour cover July 1879 to May 1880 and include France, Italy and Switzerland. Sophia appears to have undertaken the tour with her siblings Bob and Mary. Other visits and journeys in this volume include Axminster from 9 September to 21 October 1880; St Leonards 8 to 20 June 1881; Lynmouth 21 July to 1 September 1881; Cornwall 18 to 27 March 1882 [a trip cut short by her father's illness]; Harrogate 22 September to 17 October 1882; Cornwall 15 to 29 June 1883 [a trip cut short by the death of her brother Henry]; Cornwall 4 August 1883, moving to Plymouth on 27 September and returning to London on 4 October; and Liverpool 18 February to 6 March 1884.
There are many entries from late March 1882 concerning Sophia’s father James Turle: his last illness, his death on 28 June, his funeral service at Westminster Abbey on 3 July and burial at Norwood [although it was suggested that he should be buried in the Abbey], a memorial service at the Abbey on 17 December 1882, and the memorial ‘window Bob has put up to Pater & Mater’ at the Abbey, which is mentioned on 5 July 1883. Short obituaries and notices re the death of James Turle are pasted into this volume.
On 18 September 1882 Sophia and some of her siblings move to 177 Cromwell Road as they have to leave their home in the cloisters of Westminster Abbey after their father’s death. During November and December Sophia attends ‘Morley’s lectures’ on literature at UCL. In February 1883 the former family home is demolished: Sophia takes ‘a last look. It was a melancholy one’. Cuttings re the same are pasted into the volume [on James Turle’s death the house became the property of Westminster School]. On the first anniversary of her father’s death, 28 June 1883, Sophia receives news of the sudden death, of heart disease, 'at his chambers, Lancaster House', of her brother Henry [editor of ‘Notes and Queries’ and an ‘Old Westminster’]. Various notices of H T's death are pasted into the volume. His funeral takes place on 3 July, a year to the day since the funeral of their father, James Turle.