"BONEY'S" QUILT FOUND

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 26 October 1928, Page 5

"BONEY'S" QUILT FOUND

AGED WOMAN'S UNIQUE

HEIRLOOM

OLDEST AUCKLAND-BORN CHILD

A crimson brocade quilt, under which Napoleon Bonaparte slept when making his hurried exit after Waterloo, is in the possession of a remarkable old woman, Mrs J. G. Blakey, who lives in Ponsonby Terrace and who must bo one of the oldest living citizens born in Auckland, comments a telegram in the Taranaki "Daily News." She first saw the light on 6th June, 1844, onlv four years after the town was founded." Her grandmother was Mrs Ranpolin, formerly Mrs Otto, who was well known in Auckland and lived to the age of 88. It was this old lady who use to own "Bonev's quilt" as it was known in the family. Mrs Otto's husband was connected witli the commissariat of the Duke of Wellington's army. Like the ladies one reads of in "Vanity Fair" Mrs Otto was with her husband in Belgium and it was immediately after the battle of Waterloo that this treasured quilt was looted. "All loot was fair in those days," says Mrs Blakey. Mrs Otto picked it off the bed in which Napoleon had slept the previous night and ever afterwards she regarded it as an heirloom, handing it down to her daughter, who in her turn handed it on to hers.

"No, I do not like the girls' legs today," said Mrs Blakey to a reporter when talking about the wonderful changes she lias seen. "No," she remarked, "I do not like motor-cars and to tell you the truth they, rather terrify me in Queen Street. In fact I do not care about venturing down there unless I have somebody with me." Almost unbelievable changes have Liken place since she was a little girl in the rural spot that was Auckland in those days. The cinematograph is another modern thing that Airs Blakey cannot bring herself to like. "You know she confides, "I cannot help thinking they are for children and not /or grownups'."