This item is a notebook which belonged to F.W. Hilshaw, Churchfield House, Halton, near Runcorn in Cheshire. It contains schoolwork, newspaper clippings, accounts and recipes.

This item is a photocopy of an 1870's recipe book entitled Five Hundred Dollars Worth of Knowledge for One Dollar: Great Exposure of Liquors and Recipe Book by Charles H. Hagar. The book was published in Binghampton, New York and contains recipes for alcoholic drinks and sundry other recipes for things such as hair tonic, sore throats, pain killers and others.

This collection consists of a book of typed recipes with "J.R. Ferguson" hand-written on the front cover. Its cover is hand-made with a coloured drawing of a woman carrying a platter with the name . Also included in the fonds is a letter on Hall & Furgason letterhead (Produce Commission Merchants, New York) from a son to his mother dated September 20, 1895. (Note different spelling of the name Ferguson/Furgason).

This fonds consists of three small notebooks: Volume 1 containing information on duties and freight rates for beer and gin from approximately 1897; Volume 2 containing recipes for alcoholic beverages and Volume 3 containing recipes for assorted chemists' balms, perfumes, cleaning products and medicine.