Parchment Manuscript Indenture, consisting of the counterpart lease of No. 50 Holywell Street, Strand, Middlesex, from the Revd Charles Felton Smith, Edwin Augustus Smith and others to John Bedford Leno.

Leno (1824-94) was a printer, publisher, poet and editor, and a significant figure in nineteenth-century radicalism. In 1845, while a printer, he led a group of radical workers who started a Young Men's Improvement Society and circulated a manuscript newspaper entitled the 'Attempt'. He then became branch secretary of the local Chartists. In 1849 the 'Attempt' became a printed journal, the 'Uxbridge Pioneer'. In 1861 he was editor of the 'Poetic Magazine' and in 1881 of the 'Anti-tithe Journal'. He was the author of several collections of poetry, one of which - 'The Aftermath', 1892 - is prefaced by an autobiography. On one side each of three pieces of parchment, each roughly twenty-one inches by thirty-eight. In black ink with red borders. The lease is between 'The Reverend Charles Felton Smith of The Vicarage Crediton in the County of Devon Clerk and Edwin Augustus Smith of Blandford in the County of Dorset Gentleman of the first part William Vizard [1774-1859, Solicitor to Queen Caroline] and George Augustus Crowder both of Number 55 Lincolns Inn Fields in the County of Middlesex Gentlemen of the second part and John Bedford Leno of No. 7 Holywell Street Strand in the said County of Middlesex Publisher of the third part'. Signed by Leno and with red wax solicitors' seal on green ribbon. With ink government stamp and embossment on blue paper.