A CHAPTER OF ROMANCE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17, 4 December 1861, Page 2

A CHAPTER OF ROMANCE.

(From the I^oim I^eum, Sept. 2G.) An extraordinary story, which reads more lil^e a page extracted, fro.m the MijMe?;ies of Paris, or the Mysteries, of JLfmdon, than an occurrence in what we jyr-e usually accustomed to lqok upon as real life, comes to. us from Rugby. It concerns a, young child, nat quite three years eld, and heir to £14,0Q0 a-year, who. has just been rescued from a loathsome den in the purlieus of Drury-*. lane, aft er having been suckled and fed from its birth among thieves, prostitutes, and beggars. The father of that child was brought up on Sep- ;- tember 16, on a warrant, before two of th,e Warwickshire magistrates, to answer the charge. The prisoner. Mr. Hill, married Miss Burdett, a granddaughter of Sir Francis Burdett, a lady in whose welfare Miss Burdett Coatts, by whom she had been adopted, took the liveliest interest. For several years after their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Hill are represented as having lived most affectionately together ; so much so that the latter devised the whole of her property, which is of very considerable value, to her husband in the event of no issue surviving her decease. But an event which in ordinary cases would have increased this happiness, suddenly turned it into gall and bitterness. When on her way from Dublin to London to be confined, Mrs. Hill was obliged to remain at Rugby, and there the child who has formed the subject of the present inquiry was born, at the commencement of January, 1859. This child the prisoner registered as <• Kabert Hill, sun of Robert Hill and Mary Hill, maiden n,ame Seymour." About a week afterwards, having prevailed iipon his wife, to pia.ee the child out to nurse, he came to London to make the necessary and proper arrangements, as, yfo w-as supposad, for that purpose ; and in a day or so the child, in the care of a, young girl named Catherines Parsans, left for London by train, and was met at the Euston-square- s,ta.tion, by the. father. From that time up to within the last few weeks, a period of more than two years and a-hajif, the mother could obtain no tidings of her lost child. She had been informed by the girl, Catherine Parsons, that it had been placed in improper hands; but the prisoner succeeded for a time in allaying bath her anxiety and her su,spici©os, by fallacious reports of the satisfactory- manner in which the child was progressing. At length, when Mrs. Hill would brook no further delay, she was informed the child was. dead, then that it had left Englandl for Australia, and finally, after having, as it is alleged, been subject to illusage, a separation took place, and the weak women's rights were confided to the care of those who were better able to look after them than herself. A couplt of London detectives soon succeeded in obtaining a clue, which, though it eventually turned out a correct one, might have led to the discovery of any forsaken little one in St. Giles's. A wornari informed them that eighteen months ago she lived on the same floor with another woman, who had no children, but who had in her room a child which she had received from a gentleman, at a railway station. This with the child waa tracked, through some of the vilest dens imaginable, to a house situated in a filthy alley, not more than five minutes' walk from two of the greatest! thoroughfares of London. In a small apartment on the second-floor, in one corner o,f which lay a man, nearly naked, dying, and around whom were squatted several women, in the most ragged afgrd miserable condition, the whole place reeking with filth and stench, the detectives tound the woman Andrews, and the heir to £14,000 a-year. The child, almost in a state of nudity, was covered with filth and vermin, sores and wounds—a dreadful picturej of the degraded state to which neglect and ill-usage" can reduce humanity. And now the story in; all its darkness was brought to light. Andrews,1, with two children—one in arms, the other in! the gutter—was begging in Windmill-street, andj one wet Saturday night was accosted by the; prisoner. He asked her if she would take euro of; a child—to treat it like her own-—line-the little| one with hare feet standing in the gutter, on that' cold, raw, wet Saturday evening in January. lt'\ she liked, he added, she might dispose of it,- r>vv~\ haps to another beggar, to attract' by the -display j of such touchiug misery the sympathies of the j

ipassers-rby. The bargain was struck on Sunday jnight, and the night afterwards the father dp(livered his child, at midnight, to that woman, ia the presence of a friend who is now in gaol for theft, and the servant girl who brought the chi\<l from Rugby. The child, then about ten days old, was wrapped in a shawl which the mother pecu-* liarly valued. That shawl, which the woman Andrews pawned, has been identified by Mrs, Hill. The box in which the child's linen had been packed was found in Andrews' possession. In short, the identity of the child is said tq have been made clearly manifest. Mr. Hill's examination began on the 16th September, and was continued on the 21st. The little boy was produced in court, and his appearance excited much commiseration. The prisoner was remanded till September 25.