1823. Carta de Dona Isabel Maria de Leirós para Fernando António de Almeida, fazendeiro.

Supplication letter from Dona Isabel Maria de Leirós to Fernando António de Almeida, a land owner.

The author pleas in the name of her husband. The addressee was a former victim of her husband's extortion letters and she asks him to sign a pardon declaration. She claims powerful aristocratic connections and argues that she is helpless since she is pregnant and has daughters and a son under age.

In the first quarter of the 19th century, extortion letters became a very typical practice. Authors threatened rich addressees with all sorts of ruinous events in the case they didn't hand in a certain amount of money. The frequentness of this practice was possible also because of the political and social turmoil associated with these first years of Liberalism.