A CHAPTER OF ROMANCE.

Otago Witness, Issue 523, 7 December 1861, Page 2

A CHAPTER OF ROMANCE.

(From the Home A'ews, Sept. 26.)

An extraordinary story, which reads more like a page extracted from the Mysteries of Paris; or the Mysteries of London, than an occurrence in what we are usually accustomed to look upon as real life, comes to us from Rugby. It concerns a .young child, not quite three years eld, and heir to £14,000 a-ye:ir, who has just been rescued from a loathsome den in the purlieus of Drurylane, afier having been suckled and fed from its birth among thieves, prostitutes, and beggars. Tue father of that child was brought up on SepIteinber 16, on a warrant, before two of the 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 Coutts, 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 •jail 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,! 18:>9. This child the prisoner registered as " Robert Hill, son of Robert Hill and Mary Hill, maiden name Seymour " About a week afterwards, having prevailed upon bis wife to place the child out to nurse, hecarne to London to makefile necessary and proper arrangements, as it was supposed, for that purpose ; and in a day or so the child, in the care of a young girl named Catherine Parsons, left for London by train, and was me: at the Euston-squarc station by the father. From that time up to within the last few weeks, a period of more than two years and a-half, the mother could obtain no tidings of her lost child Mic 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 both her anxiety and her suspicions 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 lit had If ft England for Australia., aud finally, af-

fcr having', as it is alleged, been subject to ill* usage, a separation took place, and the weak women's rights were confided to the carp of those who were better able to Jook after them thtin liersclf. A couple of London detectives soon succeeded in obtaining; a clue, which, though it cventnß'ly turned out a correct one, might have led to the discovery of any forsaken little one in St. Giles's. A woman 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 was 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 of which lay a man, nearly na ed, thing, and around whom were squatted several women, in the most ragged and miserable condition, the whole place reeking with filth and stencli, the detectives mnnd 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 picture of the degraded state to which neglect and ill-usage can re-luce humanity. And now the story in all its darkne.-s was brought to light. Andrews, with two children — one in arms, the other in the gutter — was begging in Windmill-street, and one wet Saturday night was accostid by tho prisoner. He asked her if she would take care of a child — to treat it like her own — litce the little one with bare feet standing in the gutter, on that cold, raw, wet Saturday evening in January. "If s-he liked, lie added, she might dispose of it* perhaps to another beggar, to attract by the display of such touching misery the sympathies of the passers-by. The bargain was struck on Sunday night, and the night afterwards the father delivered his child, at midnight, to that woman, in the presence of a friend who is now in gaol for theft, and the servant girl who brought the child from Kugby. The child, then about ten days old, was wrapped in a shawl which the mother* peculiarly valued. That s>hawl, which the woman Andrews pawned, has been identified by Mrs. Hill. The box in which the child's linen bad been packed was found in Andrews' possession. la short, the identity of the child is said to 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 •>ei>tember 25.