Unlocking 5 Important Letters From History

From diplomatic correspondence to the love letters your grandparents wrote to each other — letters are a fascinating and versatile medium of communication. And this type of text can take on a wide variety of themes and forms.

As the oldest, and for a long time, most important way of communicating over long distances, letters hold great historical value. In this post, we would like to take a look at this genre by sharing the stories of five of the most impactful letters from history.

The letter that kick-started the genre

The Achaemenid Empire was a centre of political, administrative, economic, cultural and artistic innovation and prosperity up to its conquest by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Well known for its elaborate administrative system of satrapies, the empire also left behind the remarkable ruins of its ceremonial capital, Persepolis, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, still showcasing its former glory.

But here is an additional interesting fact about the Achaemenids: the first letter ever written is believed to date back to this special era of Persian history. According to the ancient historian Hellanicus, the Achaemenid Queen Atossa of Persia invented this text type in 500 BC.

The ruins of Persepolis are not the only remnants of the Achaemenid Empire’s greatness © J.W. Barker via Wikimedia Commons

Although there are not many records about Atossa, she was inarguably the most influential woman in the history of ancient Iran. Not only was she the second woman ever to be granted the religious title ‘Lady’, but she was also deemed the most educated woman at court and was the head of palace administration.

Unfortunately, the letter she allegedly wrote was not preserved, and so we cannot tell anything about its content or the motives behind sending it. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that Atossa probably initiated the development of this type of long-distance communication, giving birth to a whole industry and laying the foundations for today’s postal service.

The letter that improved marine safety for everyone

The scene from Titanic where Jack freezes in the icy waters of the North Atlantic while Rose manages to stay afloat on a wooden board is unforgettable. However, the real tragedy was that many lives could have been saved if the ship had better safety measures.

The number of surviving passengers was infamously low, especially among those who could only afford a third-class ticket. This left many relatives and friends wondering why. Ben Tillet, a well-known trade union leader, addressed this in a letter to the Marine Department, demanding stricter marine safety regulations.

For him, one reason less than 25 percent of third-class passengers survived was the ‘vicious class antagonism’ on board. He believed that passengers travelling in first class were prioritised while loading the lifeboats.

An insufficient quantity of lifeboats led to many avoidable deaths © J.W. Barker via Wikimedia Commons

In general, the management of the lifeboats was utterly flawed: some boats carried much fewer passengers than possible. Moreover, to improve the ship's appearance, only 20 lifeboats were provided instead of the recommended 64. This caused Tillett to demand ‘provision of adequate life-saving appliances in boats, rafts and belts [...]’.

He further criticised that, to save time and cost, the Titanic took a shorter route through iceberg-infested waters and that regardless of warnings from nearby ships, it did not slow down, let alone stop at night. Tillett’s letter and the inquiry that followed the catastrophe led to important changes in maritime law in both the UK and the US.

The letter that changed science forever

Lise Meitner, born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1878, was the second woman to obtain a PhD in physics. Alongside her research partner, the German chemist Otto Hahn, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize each year from 1924 to 1934 for their discovery of various isotopes and the Auger Effect.

Meitner and Hahn discovered several new isotopes © LukaszKatlewa via Wikimedia Commons

When Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938, the research team had been searching for an element heavier than uranium in Berlin, a discovery that would have guaranteed them the Nobel Prize. However, Meitner, now a German citizen, faced danger due to her Jewish background and fled to Sweden. Still, she and Hahn continued to exchange letters and discuss experiments.

In December 1938, one of these experiments changed the history of science: Otto Hahn and his assistant discovered that bombarding uranium atoms with neutrons could split them into barium and krypton, releasing energy and neutrons, thereby satisfying Einstein’s legendary formula E=mc2.

Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch theoretically explained this process, later known as nuclear fission. In February 1939, a letter to the editor titled ‘Disintegration of Uranium by Neutrons: a New Type of Nuclear Reaction’ was printed in the science journal Nature, listing Meitner as a co-author.

Hahn discovered nuclear fission in an experiment and Meitner provided the theoretical explanation © Luidger via Wikimedia Commons

However, Otto Hahn, who continued his research in Nazi Germany, did not credit Meitner in his own publications and claimed sole discovery of fission when he won the Nobel Prize in 1944. He never addressed these omissions. While Meitner's recognition was limited for many years, she has received more acknowledgment recently. For instance, in 1997, she had element 109 — Meitnerium — named after her.

The letter that influenced the civil rights movement

Martin Luther King Jr. was not only the most influential figure of the American Civil Rights Movement but also a rhetorical mastermind. Most people have heard of his famous speech ‘I have a dream’, delivered at the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in August 1963.

Some months before King so eloquently expressed his thoughts and wishes for the future of his fellow African-American citizens orally, he penned a piece of writing that would be a crucial step towards fulfilling his dream.

March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 1963 © Unknown author or not provided via Wikimedia Commons

King began his fight against racism in Birmingham, Alabama, with the Birmingham campaign in April 1963, drawn by the citizens’ desegregation efforts. On April 12, 1963, he was arrested for marching without a permit. While in jail, he used whatever material he could get his hands on, including the margins of newspapers and paper from his lawyer, to write the so-called ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’. It was a response to local clergymen criticising the ongoing protests and insisting that the battle against social injustices be fought in the courts instead.

In the letter, King ardently argued in favour of the demonstrations, asserting that waiting would achieve nothing and calling for civil disobedience. The letter was later published in The Atlantic and in King’s book ‘Why We Can’t Wait’. To this day, it is considered one of the most striking records of the American civil rights movement.

The letter that was never sent

“Suffering is one very long moment.” — These are the opening words of ‘De profundis’, Oscar Wilde’s famous letter written during his imprisonment between 1895 and 1897 for “gross indecency” with men. Addressed to his former lover, Lord Alfred ‘Bosie’ Douglas, who played a key role in Wilde’s conviction, the letter expresses his feelings of betrayal and hurt, while also touching on his daily routine in prison and spiritual themes.

During the first months of his punishment, Oscar Wilde was moved between several prisons with extremely harsh conditions, leaving him both mentally and physically scarred. After being transferred one last time, he spent the remainder of his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, where prisoners were held in strict isolation.

Oscar Wilde’s cell in Reading Gaol as it looked in 2016 © Jack1956 via Wikimedia Commons

Wilde had no access to reading materials, and while he had pen and paper, it was only for writing letters, which underwent rigorous inspection. The writing materials were promptly taken away once he was finished.

But the Irish writer found a loophole: there were no length limits on letters, and prisoners could take unfinished writings with them upon release. And so, in early 1897, Wilde began writing to Lord Douglas.

At the end of each day, the writing materials were removed but returned the next day since he had not finished his writing. This continued for the following months, resulting in 20 pages and 55,000 words by his release. Wilde gave the letter to the journalist Robert Ross, another ex-lover, who published it in 1905, five years after Wilde’s premature death. Ross titled it ‘De Profundis’, quoting Psalm 130, and donated the original copy to the British Library. In the first edition, passages mentioning Douglas or his family were cut out. Only in 1962 did ‘De Profundis’ appear in its full length.

Handwritten text recognition: the key to unlocking the secrets of old letters

Letters have the potential to influence the course of history, preserve valuable information about historical events, and become masterpieces of literary history. The majority of the letters discussed above have something in common: they were written by hand. To unlock the historical value of such letters, somebody has to decipher the handwriting - a task that was once difficult and time-consuming.

But today, thanks to AI, you can automatically transcribe handwritten documents with handwritten text recognition tools like Transkribus. Simply upload a picture of your document to the Transkribus platform and choose a text recognition model suitable for the handwriting contained in it. After the text is recognised, you can edit it to your needs in the Editor.

If you are interested in revealing the untold stories of your historical letters, you can try Transkribus for yourself. Register now at app.transkribus.org or get a taste of its power with our demo version here.