Edmund's great grand-daughter, by descent from Jessie's son Cleveland, has kept the diary intact. The first pages include a photograph of 'Doris' at Corfu - August 1860. There are several other pages mainly concerned with the ships complement of 'Doris' and the layout of rigging and spars. The bulk of the diary, which really begins when Edmund returns from sea in 1866, consists of detailed, day by day, notes of payments for everything that caused money to be spent in the Fritham household: from the threepence tolls for using the roads, to mending boots and paying six pence to someone for holding his horse while Edmund is at church.
A taste of Edmund's financial challenge can be seen in a diary entry which has a list of money borrowed between 1858 through to 1863.
In total it came to £1,580. This is something equivalent to £100,000 today. Also interesting are the lenders. Mr John Phillipson, whose family seem to have been renting a portion of Fritham Lodge, lent Jessie £80. A Lieutenant Brodrick R.N. lent £200 and Mrs - no name shown - seems to have lent £1000 on the security of the Fritham property. The diary entry shows that almost all the loans had been paid but there remained about £310 still owing on February 16th 1869 - nearly eleven years since he began to borrow money. One of those remaining loans was for £100 borrowed from his eldest sister Ellen who had married William Wyndham of Dinton Wiltshire.
