The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1848-07-18 00:00:00

EXTRAORDINARY NARRATIVE

A romance of real life in its incidents and catastrophe,
far beyond the wonders of an average novel, was closed on
Thursday, in the Court of Queen's Bench, by a verdict
which appears to have been as gratifying to every listener
as it must needs have been to the parties immediately
concerned. There was no very great conflict of evidence
in the matter, as the case turned entirely upon a selection
between one of two probable stories, and we shall be best
enabled to present the reader with an intelligible digest of
the three days' trial by assuming, as the jury did, that the
tale of the plaintiffs was strictly true, and by relating it in
the shape of such a continuous whole as mey be con-
structed from the minutes of the proceedings.
In the year 1763 there was born, at Badwell Ash, in the
county of Suffolk, Theophilus, the son of John and Eliza-
beth Turner, who were people in a humble rank of life,
the husband being gardener to the Rev. Dr. Ord, of Forn-
ham St. Martin, in the same parts. As the boy gave pro-
mise of quicker senses than ordinary, he was sent to a vil-
lage school where writing happened to be taught with
peculiar excellence, and subsequently, by the kindness of
Dr. Ord, to some seminary at Bury St. Edmund's—very
probably, as his classical proficiency is now mentioned, to
the admirable old grammar school of that ancient town.
It seems that the boy looked to the sea as his future pro-
fession, since Dr. Ord used familiarly to call him " Jack
the Sailor ;" out upon some quarrel between himself and
his patron he left Suffolk, and obtained, through the con-
tinued kindness of his friend, a situation in some school
near London. This was in his youth, and from that mo-
ment almost up to the present day none of the Suffolk
people ever heard or saw any more of their lost country-
man Theophilus Turner.
In the year 1842, on the last day of January, there died
at No. 13, Huntley-street, Brunswick-squiire, a gentle-
man of the name of John Turner, insane and intestate,
leaving behind him property exceeding the value of
£60,000. He had been an eccentric old gentleman, and
up to a year or two before his death had been not only in
possession of his faculties, but of faculties considerably
above the common run of such endowments. He had
been a clerk, first, in the Ordnance-office, and subse-
quently in the Sun Fire-office, in which establishment he
conducted himself so serviceably that in 1825 he was per-
mitted to retire upon a pension of £2OO per annum as the
reward of nearly forty years' work. He had gained prizes
not only in the lottery of life, but in that less manageable
lottery with which the government of those days encou-
raged the speculative propensities of the people, and a for-
tunate ticket was always understood to have blest him
with something like a comfortable independence. His
habits and appearance were as singular as those of wealthy
single gentlemen are invariably expected to be. He wore
pantaloons and powder, entered only periodically into
society, and had only once changed his landlady during a
space of 35 years. Though not commonly talkative
respecting his extraction, yet he now and then dropped
hints which were not forgotten, and he shewed some pre-
dilection for the county of Suffolk, by making an excur-
sion thither twice exery year for the sake of shooting, and
receiving from the same quarters occasional presents of
game, which were left for him at the old eastern counties
house, the White Horse, in Fetter-lane, and fetched from
the office with his own hands. At length, as we have said,
in 1842, John Turner departed this ',life, after a goodly
lease of it, and, in default of any next of kin, Mr. Maule,
the solicitor to the Treasury, impounded his whole pro-
perty in behalf of the Crown.
Now comes the romance of the story. Few readers of
discreet age and average observation can have failed to
remark that the memory of a relative lost when young,
and supposed to be revelling in riches in some mysterious
quarter of the globe, is invariably cherished by every
branch, sprig, and bud of the whole family, with a reve-
rence and tenacity, compared to which the affection of a
Roman for his household gods, or of a Chinese for his
ancestral sacrifices, vanishes absolutely into nothing.
Two whole generations had passed away, and yet the
name and fortunes of the missing Theophilus were still
affnrourite topic with the Turners of Livermere, and ex-
peditions were actually made to the great metropolis to
discover that relative, who was presumed by all to be in-
fallibly Aurviving in unbounded wealth and grandeur.
One wornail, with the constancy of her ser, actually de-
Nutedlediferto the search, and was known in London as

• the lady in search of her long lost kinsman. Even before
Mr. Turner's death some glimmerings of gratulation were
directed towards him, but, when the amount and disposal
of his property became known, no further hesitation was
felt, and the kinship and goods of the deceased gentle-
man were boldly claimed by the thirteen surviving Tur-
ners of the Suffolk stock, The result has rewarded their
fidelity and justified their claims, for the jury were tho-
roughly satisfied by the evidence of the witnesses and the
eloquence of Sir Frederick Thesiger of the identity of
Theouhilus the schoolboy and John the gentleman ; and
that the crown has now to refund the £60,400 at stake
for the benefit and disposal of the plaintiffs at large.
Considering that the proof required involved nothing
less than the identification of a gentleman who died six
years back in London with a lad who left Suffolk 70 years
ago, it must be admitted that Sir Frederick spun his
threads of evidence into a yarn of wonderful neatness
and likelihood. It was proved by the concurring testimo-
ny of witnesses altogether unconnected with the family,
that the deceased had spoken of himself as the son of a
gardener, as born in Suffolk, as once a teacher in a school,
and as having had a sister named Sarah. He was also
proved, by the evidence of a surviving schoolfellow, to
have been at school at Bury, and a coincidence more
really curious than such analogies usually are was exposed
in the feet. that he nced 4,,