O'DONONAN ROSSA'S ASSAILANT.

Timaru Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 3281, 2 April 1885, Page 3

O'DONONAN ROSSA'S ASSAILANT.

A Romantic History. {Pull Mull Gazette.) The fair assassin, the bewitching adventuress — whom we may truthfully term the heroine of the hour — has attained the object of her desires. It is not easy to piece together the links of her strange career, but it is pretty evident that Mrs 41 Dudley " waa eaten up by an insatiable craving for notoriety. Rosaa and Dudley were well met. We have discovered a few fresh facts concerning her career which will doubtless be interesting. Her father, according to heresay evidence, waß an officer m the army, rich and reckless, whose mistress, a lady of good position, was the mother of the -would-be assassin. At her death m 1865, from cancer induced by riding, the daughter was consigned to the care of the rector of Shipton, a quiet Yorkshire village, on the understanding that a certain sum should be paid yearly for her support. The money was, we hear, never forthcoming, and the child remained at the rectory as the adopted daughter of the rector and his wife. At this period of her life she was known as Lucy Dale, a. name she changed more than once to Buit. her purpose. It is at present difficult to say at what age she launched herself m London, and her adventures here are pretty well known by this time. Endowed with many attractions of face and manner, she seems to have captivated all hearts, and among them that of Mr "Dudley," whom she first met at a Camden-town lodging-house. Those who know " Dudley" prefer to remain silent for the present. One child which was born at Barnet under the roof of some friendly cottager, was the result of this intrigue ; then Mrs Dudley appears to have moved to Walthamstow, then to Stoke Newington, devoting the intervals to nursing. Mr " Dudley," wearying of his mistress, took himself off one day ; the child died, was buried at Southgate Cemetery, and he was heard of no more. Mrs Dudley must for some years have supported herself, but she never seems to have applied herself with tenacity to any single object. She attended a medical school, and obtained several engagements m West-end houses as a professional nurse, accepting a case of small-pox, or typhoid, or one of measles, withe«[ualindifference. Vivacious, decidedly clever, with a pretty face and a lissom figure, it is not surprising that Mrs Dudley bethought herself of the ■tage aa a means of gaining a livelihood. She took a few leßaons m London, and applied m vain for a London engagement. In Manchester she was more successful, and appeared m a pantomime there. Mrs Dudley is said by one or two of her friends, whom our representative has seen, to have been a facile composer of verses and romance at the early age of eight, and for many years composition has besn her chief amusement. She filled reams upon jeams of paper, but unluckily none of her effusions have been preserved. " Ouida" was her favorite novelist. Those who know her say that her poisonings were merely little dramas got up for the edification of her. friends. On her return to the old country Lucy Dale, alias Lucille Yseult Dudley, alias Mis 3 Dorigne, need have no lack of engagements, matrimonial 91~ otherwise.