He went long distances sometimes (observes that charming lady). It was on one of these excursions that he first met Hannah Peace—not Hannah Peace, if you please, but Mrs. William Ward.
I will tell you what he told me about their first meeting. It was at the side of a canal on the road to Hanley, in Staffordshire, he met Hannah, who had a baby in her arms, then six months old.
She stated, after they had got into conversation, that she was going along that way to find out her brother-in-law, who was the only friend she had in the world.
She was then a widow of William Ward, a pensioner, and she told Peace so. He asked her what she was going to do if she did not find her brother-in-law, and she answered, “I think of committing suicide.”
Peace said, “You are surely not going to do that—a nice-looking woman like you.” She was much older than he was, and I have no doubt was a good-looking woman.
Peace said that they stayed all night at an inn. He promised her that if she would live with him he would prove a good father to Willie.
They went to Worksop for a while, and when there he perpetrated several burglaries in the neighbourhood. I can’t tell you how many. But there, if I had taken his advice, I would have put down everything and written his life.
That child is now Willie Ward, who is twenty-one years of age, and Peace is not his father.
He (Willie) never showed strong affection for Peace, but when he came to live at our house in London he would do anything for me.
I think Peace took Mrs. Ward and her child to Sheffield and introduced her to his mother as his wife there.