WANTED, A MOTHER.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 11, 14 March 1908, Page 57

WANTED, A MOTHER.

“Would the person who left a male infant at Liyerpool-street Station in the year 1888 kindly communicate with U.S., Rose Bank, Tyler’s Green, Bucks, as advertiser is very anxious to know his parents.” Behind this little advertisement, which appeared in the London papers recently, lies a romance. Tyler’s Green is a quaint village perched on the top of one of the hills near High Wycombe. At the principal grocery store in the place, a young man named Thomas Porter is employed, and he is the U.S. of the advertisement. He is just out of his apprenticeship as a grocers’ assistant; his prospects are good, and he has plenty of friends, but he is not entirely happy for the simple reason that he is “nobody’s son.” Nineteen years ago he was found by a policeman one day in the month of September at Liverpool-' street Station. No trace could be found of his parents, and in duo course ho was sent to a home, where he remained until old enough to be “boarded out” with humble folk at Little Missenden, in Buckinghamshire. His foster-parents were kind to him, but the poor little chap hungered for "a real father and mother,” like his associates in the village school possessed, and the thought of being nobody’s child often reduced him to tears. One day he was found sobbing by the roadside by a little

girl, who was a •member of the same Sunday-school class. She was a kindhearted little body, and sought to comfort Thomas. "What are you crying for?” she asked. And the weeping boy sobbed out, “Cos I haven’t got a fattier and mother and a home like other boys.” “Then," said she, “you’d better come home with me,” and promptly haled Thomas to her mother’s cottage. The girl's parents, though not liberally endowed with this world’s goods, quickly decided that, although they couldn't satisfy his desire for a real fattier and mother, Tommy should at any rate have a real home witli them, and “home” it has been for Thomas Porter ever since. But, though intensely grateful to the ■warm-hearted couple who have shown such practical sympathy for him during his childhood and youth, Thomas Porter’s longing for “the real tiling” in parents grows with the passage of time. To an interviewer he said:—“l am longing to see my mother if she is alive. After all, such a wish is only natural. A great crime has been committed against me. I have forgiven that. 1 have no wish to punish anybody. If my mother is alive, she may be poor. She may want me to help her. In any case I would like to see her just once — if only for five minutes.” Can anyone in New Zealand help “Thomas Porter”—as he was named by the authorities when he was found at laverpool-street—to solve the mystery of his identity?