LEAP INTO DUKEDOM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19365, 23 July 1925, Page 3

LEAP INTO DUKEDOM

“ A GALLANT STORY.” The name of the Duke of Leeds i> Osborne, and the proud title would never have been added to the name if it had not been for a young clothworker apprentice who took the first step to the peerage by leaping into the Thames from London Bridge four centuries ago.

This is the gallant, pretty story as it has been told by Sir Alfred Bower, I.ord Mayor of London, of his prede cossor, Edward Osborne, Lord Mayor ; n 1582. Young Osborne, the son of a gentleman of Kent in days when gentlemen did not despise an honest trade, had come up to London to be apprenticed to a clothworker. The cloth worker was Alderman Sir William Hew itt. who. as befitted so important a city magnate, lived in one of the tall, gabled houses on old London Bridge. Prom its windows you could drop a stone into the Thames, rushing swftly below as the tide coursed through its narrow arches, and from one of those windows little Anne Hewitt, scampering too near the low window-sill, slipped and fell. The young apprentice heard the nurse’s startled scream, saw two tiny arms outflung. and without a moment’s pause plunged after the child into the current 60 feet below.

He saved her. They both lived, and it is not hard to imagine the tears of thankfulness of the parents, or the shy adoration of little Anne for her preserver. The romance thus begun endert as romances should. Young Osborne waited for little Anno, and when she grow up they wore married. It is to be hoped they were happy ever after. At any rate, young Osborne had the right cloth working stuff in him. He became rich in the industry, was elected Lord Mayor and from this merchant prince sprung the merchant Duke of Leeds.