KIDNAPPED LORD

Hawera Star, Volume L, 14 February 1931, Page 9

KIDNAPPED LORD

TT is just ninety years since the pass-ino-'of the first British Act. of Parliament prohibiting the use oi climbing boys as chimney-sweepers. Though the Act mitigated the evil, it.(hut not abolish it, and it was not, till 1864 that persons employing boys as live chim-ney-brushes ran the risk of lmpnsonm There is no sweep in London whose memory goes back to. the early legis lation, but on the Portman estate there is a little colony' of sweeps who were born Tn the business, men who have heard from their own lathers of the hardships formerly endured by little “SSfrS. i» Mr.,. Dcakin ~vl,o carries on his business in the little house in which it was established nearly a century ago. He told a correspondent of the ‘ ‘ Observer of tno dramatic incidents of his father's life. Nearly a hundred years ago, lom Deakin was a very small boy whose father had gone on a voyage to Australia, and had never returned. His death having been presumed, his mother married again, and the boy became virtually the property of a master sweep v- in the neighbourhood of Edgeware. ""These boys," said Mr Deakin, V ~u soa to go right up the chimneys, and thev were kept, hard at it. most of the tinT® The usual terms in those days for a youth regularly apprenticed to a

When Boys W ere Stolen

master sweep were three shillings a week and a wash once a week, but the climbing boys, who bore the brunt of the work, would get only a few haltpence." Mr Deakin gave the correspondent his* version of the well-known story of Lord Portman, who was kidnapped close to his own home and within a tew yards of the place where they were talking. It was then a beautiful district sparsely inhabited, and the child was playing in charge of a nurse whose attention was diverted. He was-cajoled into a passing g'ipsy wagon, stripped ot his clothing, and presently handed over to a, sweep and his wife, on the plea* that his alleged parents were too- poor to keep him, but would call and pay when times- were better.

His distracted mother could not endure the associations of her London home and the household was removed to the country. To the new home came a little sweep one fine May morning. The dining-room chimney with the promise housekeeper set him to work on the of a good breakfast when lie had finished. Twice she came into the room to find him gazing at the pictures, and in reply to her scolding said: “I have seen these pictures before. My mamma s pictures were exactly like them." A tattoo mark on his arm was an important factor in the identification winch quickly followed.