A CHILD-HEIRESS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 104, 6 May 1907, Page 5

A CHILD-HEIRESS.

Ker Strange Adventures. Across the World Three Times. Press Association. —Copyright. Melbourne, May 4. It is stated that the little heiress Dorothy Knipe is on her way from Vancouver in charge of her father. A couple of months ago London papers told of the frantic efforts of Mrs Roderic Knipe, of Melbourne, Australia, to discover, in London, some trace of her kidnapped nine-year-old daughter Muriel Doris Knipe. According to the accounts, the child, who is heiress to a considerable fortune, has been " twice carried off, upon a flight of twelve thousand miles on each occasion—once from England to Australia, then from Australia to England. Then she has disappeared upon a .third wandering.

In December, 1904, it is added, Mrs Knipe and her husband and child came to London. Amid disagreements which ensued, the father removed the girl from the mother's care. Mrs Knipe began legal proceedings to regain access, and the father, who was ordered to produce the child, also employed a firm of solicitors and resisted the mother's claim. After six or seven months of Chaucery litigation, Mr Justice Buckley ordered that the mother have access to her daughter, and that the father pay the costs; but this was ineffectual, as the child vanished before the decision was given.

Mrs Knipe, hearing by cablegram that the father and the child had reached Melbourne, followed immediately and fonnd thcin. Tho child had come tr> London originally with her parents in tho luxury of the P. and 0. saloon. She had been token back in the lessor comfort of the Orient steerage. A truce was agreed upon, and lasted a few months. But anothor flight across the ocean was awaiting the little heiress. One September morning mother and child disappeared from Melbourne, and sailing by a Blue Anchor liner, via Cape Colony and Las Palmas for England, reached London on 13th November. The husband pursued the fugitives. Suspecting this would happen, Mrs Knipe was laying plans to educato the child m the security of a convent known only, as she hoped, to herself. In consultation with her solicitor she decided temporarily upon Worthing, and the school which is controlled by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Paris.

The husband, to get a clue, kept a watch on Mrs Knipe's bankers in the city, knowing she would have to come there for money. She came, and was told by one of the officials that Mr Knipe had been seen outside the bank. She hailed a hansom and drove away, changed to another hansom on the way, stopped at Marshall and Snelgrovo's, hurried through the shop and out by a different door, and drove to the Queen's Gate Hotel The track, if it had been found was undoubtedly lost. Mrs Knipe subsequently went to live herself at Worthing, and took there, from Bournemouth, her mother, is an additional sentry over the child. But Mrs Knipe thinks the transference of the mother who must have been under surveillance, gave the pursuer his clue.

A few days afterwards, at noon, the little girl came gleefully out of the convent school to meet her grandmother. A tall man, in a motor cap and heavy overcoat, with its collar turned up to the ears, suddenly pushed the elderly lady aside, and exclaimed, " Come, Muriel," lifted the child, ran with her to the waiting iandau, in which was a woman dressed like a widow, and the three were driven away. When the affrighted grandmother reached the corner of the road she saw the vehicle going at a rapid pace to Shorehain. The cabman has given his name and address, and stated that he discharged his faros at Slioreham Railway Station.

Since then Mrs Knipe has not seen her daughter. So the above cablegram, if true, marks another stage in this worldpursuit.—Post.