Northern Times.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1859-01-21 00:00:00

LIFE IN LONDON.
THE SEQUEL.
We yesterday characterised the statement made
by the new Perdita, Miss lane Newell, as a
"cock-and-bull " story, and the disclosures made
during the last investigation at the Lambeth
police court have amply verified our assumption.
Miss Newell turns out to be an impudent,
shameless, and forsworn little aventuriere—to use
no harsher term ; and the charitable public have
been made the dupes of a pair of worthless im-
posters. It is true that want of continence is not
an indictable offence, and that unchaste women,
so long as they do not offend against the irovi-
sions of the New Police Act, can. no longer be
hauled off to Bridewell, there to be whipped and
sent to pick oakum ; and the advocates of Jane
Newell, if any she still have, might plead that
the examination to which she was subjected
was of somewhat an extra-judicial nature. But it
must be remembered that her mother herself first
solicited an investigation ; that the daughter sub-
mitted herself voluntarily for examination ; that
her statements were made without coercion, and
under no undue influence ; and that they contained
accusations against persons who, thougli decidedly
anything but morally white as the driven snow,
have not been, in this especial case, criminal. The
truth was elicited as by a corkscrew from the
mendacious Miss Newell. One by one her card
battlements of fiction fell to the ground, and she
stood, at last, confessedly guilty of perjury, as
wilful and as corrupt as ever was uttered in a
court of justice.
Miss Emily Hobbs is, it appears, perfectly inno-
cent of decoying the naughty ballet girl into the
toils of the Philanthropist of Somerset-terrace ;
and the now notorious Mrs. Ellis has not to
accuse herself of detaining a pure and innocent
girl a captive in her abominable bordello. The
girl walked into the den with her eyes wide
open, and of her own free will ; she elected to
stay in that abode of infamy; and was content
to share the wages of her shame with the
entremetteuse. Nay, a letter was produced in
court, written by Jane Newell to Mrs. Ellis, in
which she concocts, and requests the dissemination
of a lie as to her purity—in which she sends the
woman her "kind love," and promises to stay with
her altogether, soon, "with her mother's consent."
The disregard evinced by Miss Jane Newell for
the obligations of an oath is as extraordinary as it
is shameless. She perjures herself over and over
again in an unblushing and—as the report says—
in a " pert and forward" manner. She swore she
was virtuous, and then admitted that she hadbeen
seduced by a musician, who allowed her a guinea
a week. She swore that her only paramour
had been one. Smith—a fellow who had the im-
pudence to appear in court, and was deservedly
hooted out of it—and then she admitted having
"seen" the six or seven "gentlemen" to whom
Mrs. Ellis introduced her. She had declared that
she was not allowed to quit the house in
Somerset-terrace. The next day she confessed
to having attended a masquerade at some low
dancing saloon, attired as a page ; being
all the time resident at the lupanar in
Pimlico. Nobody asked her to invent these fig-
ments. Her lies were as gratuitous, her perjuries
as gross and as malevolent, as those of Alice Grey,
or those of Elizabeth Canning, whose name we
yesterday incidentally mentioned,l and whose case,
under curiously analogous circumstances, created
an immense sensation upwards of a century ago.
We can only ascribe the mendacity of Jane Newell
to an utter perversion of the moral sense, or to in-
nate depravity.
It is not without relutance that we have again
adverted to this most crapulous transaction.
From its squalid evil, however, may come good
in demonstrating to the noisy brawlers on the
intolerable sin of the Social Evil, as exemplified in
the forlorn creatures in rouge and rags and ribbons
who parade our streets after nightfall, that there
is sterner work cut out for them in attempting
to stem the strong undercurrent of semi-respect-
able vice and immorality that is flowing through
the social fabric. The managers of our much-
. maligned theatres do not seem immediately to blame
for the pranks of Miss Newell, and such as she.
We are introduced to a shabby Bohemia, A dingy
demi-monde, full of dubious " Mr. Smiths" and
equivocal " Mrs. Ellises," of misty Tunses of
debauchery, of whom stat nominis umbra, who
come like shadows, pay "two pounds" and " three
pounds," and so depart. We wander into oyster
shops and fifth-rate masquerades, and we are
haunted by the nightmares of those übiquitous
" lady friends" whom every man and woman in
this extraordinary Newell case seems to possess.
However, there is an end of it, so far as the
public are concerned. The stage-managers of the
Metropolitan Theatres will no longer be very
anxious, we opine, to number the black sheep,
Jane Newell, among their snowy-fleeced lambkins;
and the best persons to look after the benevolent
Mrs. Ellis are the parochial authorities of Pimlico.
For let not this woman imagine that, though
scot-free from the charge of kidnapping Jane
Newell, she is absolved in the eyes of
society or the law. Her infamous trade is known,
her guilty earnings are computed ; by all
honest and right minded persons she must be
held in utter loathing and abhorrence ; and unless
she takes exceeding good care into what
channels her philantrophy is in future diverted,
we greatly err if justice do not lay her speedily by
the heels.
It is very melancholy and very humiliating to
think that many benevolent persons whose hearts
have been opened, and whose sympathies awakened
by the recital of Mrs. Newell as it originally ap-
peared, may be disgusted, and discouraged from
further responses to the appeals of misfortune, by
the disgraceful imposture that has been practised
in this case. It is even possible that the stream of
charity that flows into the poor-boxes of our
police courts may -be checked for awhile by the
publicity given to the utterly undeserving cha-
racter of the Newells. That the check will
only be temporary we hope and believe.; for,
thank Heaven, the bounty of our country-
men and countrywomen is too exuberant,
too spontaneous, to be long kept within the
bounds of over-caution. Yet we may be permitted,
in furtherance of the sacred cause of benevolence,
respectfully to counsel those beneficent persons
whose first impulse on reading a tale of distress in
the newspapers is. to write a cheque, to cut a bank
note into halves,. to thrust a sovereign into the
incision in a card,. or to cram a quantity of postage
stamps into an envelope, and send the donation at
once packing, with a crowd of bewildering initials,
to the sitting, magisirate—to withhold their kind-
hearted contributions till the tale in question has
undergone a thorough and searching investigation
at the hands of the proper authorities.. The
metropolitan police bench is, we rejoice to say,
in the occupation of a body of gentlemen whose
learning.. whose probity, and whose impartiality
are only equalled by their kindness of heart and
their knowledge of the world. They, have been
for years. the faithful and discreet almoners of the
anonymous bounty of the public; and the juin-
dons. distribution of the funds committed to their
guardianship is certain, But it is saddling them
with most irksome labour, to render them trustees
for' undeserving objects ; it is imposing on. them a
most ungratefult task to have to announce•to. their
unknown correspondents that the persons they
desire to release have been tried in the balance
and found wanting. Let the kind-hearted readers
of the newspapers, therefore,, exercise a little
patience. Let them wait till te magistrate has
declared himself satisfied with the truth of the
statement made before him ; and then the bene-
volent may come forward, and. oast into the chest
without stint, and without the unpleasant uncer-
tainty of relieving rogues instead of deserving
objects.—Daily Telegraph.

On Sunday, ripe blackberrin were found growing in a
hedge on the road to Carrickfergus.
it is stated that the Rev. Dr. M'Crie, in
ch is antiquarian
bxplorations of London, has discovered The Minutes
of the Westminster Assembly," in manuscript, extending
over the whole period, of its sittings. Dr Leo, principal
of Edinburgh University, believed they had been destroyed
by fire,