The file includes a letter from L G Wickham Legg [editor, Dictionary of National Biography] [December 1946] to M G Lloyd Thomas requesting that she submit a notice of the life of Bertha Surteees Phillpotts for the Dictionary of National Biography Supplement, and her reply of 20 December 1946. There are also 2 typescript copies of MGLT’s entry on BSP for the ‘Supplement’ [published 1949].
In addition there is the material MGLT compiled while researching BSP’s life. This includes:
a copy (issued on 23 September 1946) of Bertha Surtees Phillpotts' birth certificate 1877;
notes on BSP’s life compiled by her third cousin, Mary Clover ‘and lent to M G Ll T 27. 8. 1946’;
entry for BSP in ‘The Annual Register’ published by Longmans, Green & Co. 1932;
a number of manuscript notes and copies made by MGLT (‘Summary’ [chronology of BSP’s life], ‘Travels’, ‘Portraits’ [on the location of three portraits], and ‘Appointments’; copies of BSP's Girton Jubilee Register form [1919] and of references to her in the Minutes of the College Executive Committee 1905-08).
In addition, there are letters to M G Lloyd Thomas pertaining to BSP as follows:
from K C Bailey, 3-7 September 1946;
from Evelyn C Gedge, 8 May 1946;
from Marjorie Gosset [BSP’s sister], 11 April 1946 - 14 March 1947 (with Marjory Gosset, ‘BSP’s place in the family’ manuscript and two typescript copies);
from J Mary Navarro (nee Anderson), 21 February - 1 March 1946;
from Mary Stocks, 2 May 1946 (about the portrait at Westfield College);
from Janet Vaughan, 3 May 1946 (about material - and the portrait at Somerville College);
from HM Government, Foreign Office, 14 September 1946.
There is a typescript copy of BSP’s letter of application to Somerville College, 28 February 1913 for a Carlisle Research Scholarship (with the manuscript draft in BSP’s hand), with a cutting from the ‘Oxford Magazine’ about her Fellowship, 15 May 1913. Also a cutting from the ‘Bedfordshire Times’ about her DBE, 15 March 1929.