A Strange Story.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 168, 4 September 1886, Page 7

A Strange Story.

In t\fe\ Bow-street Police Court, London, ,Ethel .McDonald, 29, was charged with having wandered without any visible means of subsistence. A policeman said that his attention was drawn, to the defendant and a -little boy about five years of age. They asleep on a Eeat in the .Mali, St. I Jamea'syPark, near Buckingham Palace. i Be had noticed them in the Park on previbuV occasions at night. The boy was tho defen'danfc's'nephew; and her sister waa undergoing* a term , of. imprisonment for having broken windows at the new" University Club", Pall Mall. In reply to Mr V^aughan, the defendant declared that she was the victim of a conspiracy instigated by her brother at the instance of a large IriEh landowner, wLo had effected her sister's, ruin. He and the defendant's brother were represented to have been at Stoneyhursb College together, and she said that they had declared to ruin her and force her out to die. She attributed the cause of this to the fact of two of her sisters having escaped from a Roman Catholic convent when they were children, and eaid that the man she alleged bad ruined her sister had declared that he would devote all his money to rid himself of her. She. alleged th&t her brother had been instrumental in effecting Ma ehter's ruin. She said that twenty years ago' her father was Chief Constable at Wakefield. He died 15" years ago, and for sometime after she and her pister were at school in France. They afterwards obtained situations as governepses in IreHnd. The constable said that the mother of the little boy who was found with the defendant was confined in a, lunatic asylum. Mr Vaughan said he should remand the defendant in order that inquiries might be made with reference to her statement. TBe defendant, who spoke in a perfectly rational and educated manner, declared that she was the victim of a con» spiracy. She was remanded, and the boy was sent to the wo»khouee .