The Sun.
London, England, 1838-01-09 00:00:00

POLICE INTELLIGENCE.

MANSION-110USE.
The LORD Mavois had received a letter upon a subject the
odd motive of which had induced him to withhold it from the
public `..or some days, in the expectation that some statement
might be made through a scurce of indisputable authority, re-
lative to the matter of which it treated.
The following is thB letter :
" To the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor.
" My Lord—The writer presumes that your Lordship will
kindly overlook the liberty he has taken in addressing a few
lines on a subject which within the last few weeks has caused
much alarming sensation in the neighbouring villages within
three and four miles of London.
" It appears some individuals (in, as the writer believes, the
higher ranks of life), have laid a wager with a mischievous
aid foolardy companion, name as yet unknown, that he
durst not take upon himself the task of visiting many of
the villages near London, in the three different disguises of
a ghost, a bear, and a devil ; and, me cover, that he will
not dare to enter gentlemen's gardens for the purpose of alarm-
ing the inmates of the house. The wager has, however, been
accepted, and the unmanly villain has succeeded in depriva
ing seven ladies of their senses. At one house he rang the
ar,d on the servant coming to open the door this worse
than brute stood in a no less dreadful figure than a
spectre, clad most perfectly. The consequence was that the
poor girl immediately swooned, and has never from that
moment been in her senses, but on seeing any man screams
out most violently, ' Take him away.' There arc two ladies
(which your Lordship will regret to hear) who have hus-
bands and children, and who are not expected to recover,
but likely to become burthens upon their families. For
fear that your Lordship might imagine that the writer ex-
aggerates he will refrain from mentioning other cases, if
nything more melancholy than those he has already related.
The affair has now been going on for some time, and,
strange to say, the papers are still silent on the subject. The
writer is very unwilling to be unjust towards any man, but he
has reason to believe that they have the whole history at
t heir fingers' ends ; but though interested motives are induced
to remain silent. It is, however, high time that such a detes-
table nuisance should be put a stop to, and the writer feels
assured that your Lordship, as the chief magistrate of London,
will take great pleasure in exerting your power to bring the
villain to justice. Hoping your Lordship will pardon the li-
berty I have taken in writing, I am your Lordship's most
humble servant,
" A RESIDENT OF PECKHAM."
The LORD MAYOR, on reading the account, observed that,
as our friends on the other side of the Atlantic were in the
habit of saying, it was " extraordinary, if true," In his opi-
nion it was not calculated for the meridian of London ; but if
any trick had been practised by fools he had no doubt that the
vigilance of the police might be depended upon to prevent an-
noyance. It appeared to him that the letter, which was
written in a very beautiful hand, was the production of a lady,
who might have been terrified by some bugaboo into this mode
of obtaining retribution at the hands of the Lord Mayor, but
as the terrible wiseacre had not entered the city, he could nut
take cognizance of his iniquities.
A gentleman stated to his Lordship that the servant girls
about Kensington, Hammersmith, and Ealing, told dreadful
stories of the ghost, or devil, who on one occasion, was said
to have beaten a blacksmith and torn his flesh with iron claws,
and in others to tear the clothes from the backs of females.
Not one of the injured people had been known to tell the
story. Perhaps they did not live to tell it.
The LORD MAYOR believed that one of the seven ladies
who had lost their seven senses was his correspondent. He
hoped she would do him the favour of a call, and he would
have an opportunity of getting from her such a description of
the demon as would enable him to catch him, in spite of the
paid press and police.