“I was afterwards taken on board one of her Majesty’s ships, the Driver, Captain Charles Johnston, and landed at Portsmouth; from thence I got a passage to Glasgow, ware I remained three months. Upon supplication to the register-office for seamen, in London, my register-ticket has been forwarded to the Collector of Customs, Glasgow; and he is ready to deliver it to me upon obtaining the authority of the Justices of the Peace, and I recovered the same under the 22nd section of the General Merchant Seaman’s Act. Declares I cannot write.
“(Signed) David Mackinlay, J. P.
“The Justices having considered the foregoing information and declaration, finds that Edward Albert, therein named the last-register ticket, sought to be covered under circumstances which, so far as he was concerned, were unavoidable, and that no fraud was intended or committed by him in reference thereto, therefore authorised the Collector and Comptroller of Customs at the port of Glasgow to deliver to the said Edward Albert the register-ticket, sought to be recovered by him all in terms of 22nd section of the General Merchant Seamen’s Act.
“(Signed) David Mackinlay, J. P.
“Glasgow, Oct. 6th, 1852.
“Register Ticket, No. 512, 652, age 25 years.”
“I could make a large book of my sufferings, sir, if I liked,” he said, “and I will disgrace the owners of that ship as long as they don’t give me what they owe me.
“I will never leave England or Scotland until I get my rights; but they says money makes money, and if I had money I could get it. If they would only give me what they owe me, I wouldn’t ask anybody for a farthing, God knows, sir. I don’t know why the master put my feet in the oven; he said to cure me: the agony of pain I was in was such, he said, that it must be done.
“The loss of my limbs is bad enough, but it’s still worse when you can’t get what is your rights, nor anything for the sweat that they worked out of me.
“After I went down to Glasgow for my money I opened a little coffee-house; it was called ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ I did very well. The man who sold me tea and coffee said he would get me on, and I had better give my money to him to keep safe, and he used to put it away in a tin box which I had given four-and-sixpence for. He advertised my place in the papers, and I did a good business. I had the place open a month, when he kept all my savings—two-and-forty pounds—and shut up the place, and denied me of it, and I never got a farthing.