Potter mentions Sir James Vaughan in a letter to her publisher Norman Warne, dated April 1904. "I was asked to pass a message to the publisher about the tail of the cat (sitting on the basket in Benjamin Bunny), its owner wants you to be assured that the real tail is even larger. But if you think it looks exaggerated I will take it down; it belongs to old Sir J. Vaughan, late police magistrate & he is so very feeble I am afraid he will never see the book. He is very funny about the Tailor; he says I ought to have punished Simpkin." [Judy Taylor Beatrix Potter's Letters pp.90-91]