The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 225: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

200 REYNOLDS’ WORKS known that she had held any communication with persons who were accused of such crimes, she held her peace concern- ing them. When now asked to describe to the committee of privileges the lady who had thus remained a few hours beneath her roof so many years ago, she drew a portraiture which precisely corresponded with that of the unfortunate duchess. ) The next witness was the proprietor of a lunatic asylum in Northumberland. This gentleman stated that.in the fall of 1829 — and, so far as he could recollect, about a fortnight or three weeks after the dates mentioned by Mrs. Hutton — he one morning found a lady wandering in a wild state in the fields near his establishment. He conducted her to his house, and he found that she was completely deprived of her intellect. She was no sooner located there than she sank into a deep, silent, brooding dejection. He made in- quiries throughout the neighbourhood and advertised in several local newspapers, but could obtain not the slightest clue relative to who she was. As she was evidently a per- of gentility, or at least had known better days, he and his wife took compassion on her, and when they found that she was in a way to become a mother they looked upon her as the victim of seduction who had most probably been dis- carded by her friends, and they therefore deemed it unnec- essary —or rather, we should say, useless — to institute any additional research on her behalf. She never spoke a word, but was docile as a lamb, save and except if any one endeavoured to examine the little bag which she kept in her bosom, and then she grew frantic. They therefore for humanity’s sake desisted from their endeavours to see what it contained, and still from motives of charity they kept her at their asylum. At the expiration of some weeks, however, she grew violent, and gave indications of approach- ing delirium. Her head was accordingly shaved, but during the night that followed she escaped from the asylum, and was heard of by the witness no more. The next witness produced before their lordships was Jonathan Carnabie. He deposed that he was sexton and parish clerk at the village of Woodbridge, in Westmoreland. He recollected that in the beginning of the year 1830 he very early one morning beheld a female lying over a grave in the churchyard. He hastened to raise her; he thought Gomiuicbdoc cS (E()