Contains 20 letters addressed to Nora Barlow née Darwin. All but two of the letters were written in the 1930s.
Most of the letters are taken up with commentary on family news and include references to the ailing health of her maternal step-grandmother, Katherine Euphenia Farrer née Wedgewood (d.1931), the funeral of her uncle Leonard Darwin (1850-1943)*, and the marriage of her niece, Hilda Horatio Barlow to John Padel on 27 December 1944. The letters also include descriptions of visits to Poland in 1930, Italy and the USA in 1931, the Lake District in 1933 and Norway in 1937; Ruth's thoughts on the third reading of the Mental Treatment Bill (which received Royal Assent on 10 July 1930), an offer of funding from Walter Morley Fletcher in 1930 (1873-1933), Secretary of the Medical Research Council, and the question of whether money allocated for research into 'mental deficiency' would be better spent on providing care to those affected; and a descriptive account of domestic preparations in the immediate days preceding and after the British Government's declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939.
*Note: includes letter from Ida Darwin to Nora Barlow dated April 1943 commenting on the death of Leonard Darwin.