This man having seen a hand-bill describing the child, got information that it was at Gosport, and went to the lodgings of Mrs. Magnis, who lived in a very respectable way. He asked her if she had a child, and if it was her own; to which she replied, rather faintly, that it was; but upon his saying that he doubted it, and desiring to see the child, she took him very readily to the room where it was in bed, and confessed to him that she had found the boy in London.
She afterwards, however, confessed the whole affair, and her motive for the robbery. She said that her husband, who was a gunner on board one of his Majesty’s ships, and had saved a considerable sum of money for a man in his station of life, was extremely partial to children, and had often expressed his most anxious wish to have a little darling, as he used to term it. His wife, not less anxious to gratify him in this respect, wrote to him while at sea, that she was in the family way. The gunner, highly delighted that he had obtained his desired object, sent home the earnings of many a cruise, amounting to three hundred pounds, with a particular charge that the infant should be well rigged, and want for nothing; if a boy, so much the better.
The next letter from his hopeful wife announced the happy tidings that his first-born was a son; and that she would name him Richard, after his father. The husband expressed his joy at the news, and counted the tedious hours until he should be permitted to come home to his wife and child.
At home he at length arrived, but at an unfortunate time, when the dear Richard was out at nurse, at a considerable distance; change of air being necessary to the easy cutting of his teeth. The husband’s time being short, he left England with a heavy heart, without being able to see his offspring; but he was assured that on his next trip to Gosport he should have the felicity he had so often pined for, of clasping his darling to his bosom. It was not until November 1810 that he was at liberty to revisit home, when he had again the mortification to find that his son, whom he expected to see a fine boy of three years old, had not yet cut his teeth, or that he was from home on some other pretence. The husband, however, was not to be pacified thus: he would go and see his son, or his son should come to him. Mrs. Magnis, finding him determined, thought the latter the much better way, and accordingly set off to fetch the boy. The metropolis occurred to her as the market best calculated to afford her a choice of children; and, passing down Martin’s-lane, she was struck with the rosy little citizen, Tommy Dellow, and at once determined to make him her prize. He was playing with his sister at the greengrocer’s shop-door, into which Mrs. Magnis went, with the double view of purchasing some apples, and carrying off the boy. She made much of the sister, caressed the boy, and gave him an apple. The children being pleased with her attention, she asked the little girl to show her to a pastry-cook’s shop to buy some cakes, when she got clear off with the boy, and left the girl behind.
Poor Magnis felt a parental affection for the boy; and when the imposition was discovered before the magistrate, he was grieved to the heart at being obliged to part with him under all the circumstances of the transaction.
The woman, upon evidence being produced of these facts, was committed to Winchester jail for trial; but at the assizes she escaped, on account of her being indicted in the wrong county, the felony having been committed in London.
BENJAMIN WALSH, ESQ., M.P.
TRIED FOR FELONY.
THE name of Mr. Walsh was long known in the City as that of a daring mercantile speculator; and it appears that having thrown himself into considerable difficulties, he succeeded in wiping them all off by a commission of bankruptcy, and almost immediately afterwards obtained a seat in Parliament.
Among the dignified members of the House of Commons, Sir Thomas Plomer seemed to entertain an opinion of Mr. Walsh which was in no degree altered by his recent transactions, and he intrusted him with £22,000 to purchase government securities for him. Mr. Walsh, however, laid out the greater part of the money in the stocks of the United States of America on his own account, and endeavoured to flee to that land of refuge for the guilty, but was overtaken by the arm of justice at the very port from which he intended to sail from his native country. He was unfortunately for his own design too pertinacious of his privilege of franking letters, and he continued even while flying from London, when one would have supposed he would have endeavoured to remain unknown, to despatch letters to his friends indorsed “Free, B. Walsh.” These communications being stopped by an order of the government, the course of his flight was discovered, and he was followed to Falmouth by a Bow-street runner, and the solicitor of Sir Thomas Plomer, by whom he was secured and brought to London.