Monday, May 26, to the tune of "What lumps of pudding my mother gave me!"
Poor Austin boiled his pudding, and advertised that the company expected was so numerous, he should be under the necessity of carrying it to the Restoration-gardens in St. George's-fields, where he attempted to convey it, as appears from a second notice; but the rabble, attracted by the ridiculous cavalcade, broke through every restraint, and carried off banners, streamers, &c. &c. which he demanded should be restored by the 6th of June under pain of prosecution for robbery. He says nothing of the fate of his Pudding; I must therefore leave him, in order to pay attention to a fellow-labourer in the works of singularity—a poor Benedict, who declared in the Flying Post of July 8, 1718, "About two years ago I intermarried with the daughter of Ben Bound of Foster-lane, ironmonger, who agreed to give me 600l. Soon after he furnished me three rooms to the value of 50l., for which he pretended he gave 300l.; upon which I asked him for the remainder of the 600l.; but he answered, if I insisted upon any money, he would sue me for the goods. Whereupon I filed a bill in Chancery against him, and he owned in his answer he had given me the goods; but, being resolved to have them again at any rate, upon the 11th of June last he persuaded my wife to carry them away; and upon the 12th
I was arrested in a sham action for 200l. at the suit of one Jeffery Sharpe (whom I never heard of before), and by 14 officers carried to prison; and in the mean time my house was ransacked; and, had it not been for an Attorney, I had not saved the value of one penny, most of my goods being carried away, and the rest packed up. And after they had kept my wife a fortnight, they were so barbarous to let her lie two nights upon chairs; so that she is returned to me again: and I hope if her father desist from giving her ill advice, and coveting the rest of my goods, she will still prove a good wife.
John Newall."
A woman who lived in great apparent poverty died in March 1718 within the parish of St. Dunstan in the East. Those who prepared her for burial are said to have found 8000l. concealed in her bed.
The malicious Miser deserves a niche in this temple of worthies. Such was Mr. Elderton, a farmer of Bow, who went by the name of the old Farmer of Newgate; where he was confined, and even died, because he had determined not to pay the assessments in common with his neighbours[406:A].
Another worthy was Mr. Dyche, whose singularity is thus mentioned in the Whitehall Evening-Post for August 1619: "Yesterday died Mr.
Dyche, late School-master to the Charity Children of St. Andrew Holborn. He was a strict Nonjuror, and formerly amanuensis to the famous Sir Roger L'Estrange. It is said he wore a piece of the halter in which parson Paul was executed (in the rebellion of 1715, for carrying arms against the King) in his bosom; and some time before his death had made a solemn vow not to shift his linen till the Pretender was seated on the Throne of these Realms."
In the month of March 1720 an unknown lady died at her lodgings in James-street, Covent-garden. She is represented to have been a middle-sized person, with dark-brown hair and very beautiful features, and mistress of every accomplishment peculiar to ladies of the first fashion and respectability. Her age appeared to be between thirty and forty. Her circumstances were affluent, and she possessed the richest trinkets of her sex generally set with diamonds. A John Ward, Esq. of Hackney, published many particulars relating to her in the papers; and, amongst others, that a servant had been directed by her to deliver him a letter after her death; but as no servant appeared, he felt himself required to notice those circumstances, in order to acquaint her relations of her decease, which occurred suddenly after a masquerade, where she declared she had conversed with the King, and it was remembered that she had been seen in the private apartments
of Queen Anne; though after the Queen's demise she had lived in obscurity. This unknown arrived in London from Mansfield in 1714, drawn by six horses. She frequently said that her father was a nobleman, but that her elder brother dying unmarried the title was extinct; adding that she had an uncle then living, whose title was his least recommendation.