The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-07-11 00:00:00

ROMANTIC IMPOSTURE

A FEMALE PROFESSING TO BE A DAUGHTER
OR GRAND-DAUGHTER OF DR

HOOK.

A SERIES of extraordinary events have for some time past
excited the attention of persons in various parts of Eng•
land, arising out of the conduct of an infamous young
woman, travelling through the kingdom, avowing herself
to be sometimes the daughter, and at other times the
grand-daughter, of the Rev. Dr. Hook, the vicar of Leeds ;
and stating that for years she had resided in Dr. Hook's
house, and for some unexplained cause she had recently
been expelled from it. This woman, in the neighbourhood
of Prescot, Preston, Chipping Norton, Lancashire,
Gloucestershire, Matlock, Derbyshire, and other places,
has been found apparently in a destitute and exhausted
condition, by which she has contrived to excite sympathy,
and then by the most artful and deliberate falsehoods, has
been enabled to give to her statements the semblance of
truth, and thus many benevolent and respectable persons
have, from motives of charity, been induced to render her
assistance under circumstances the most extraordinary,
and with a measure of credulity surpassing all conception.
The skill and duplicity of this accomplished impostor have
been so consummate, and the reality of her statements
was so strongly impressed on a respectable family in thd
neighbourhood of Matlock, that they have for several
weeks past received and entertained her in their mansion.
as the rejected child of Dr. Hook, thrust from his house
without cause, to seek an asylum elsewhere. It seems that
from time to time, for the space of a year and a half, com-
munications of a vague character have reached Dr. Hook
and his friends, at Leeds, but as they were sometimes
anonymous, and at other times were made in the names of
persons whose residences could not be traced, and so much

concealment and mystery were observed in the transactions,
that for the time all the efforts of Dr. Hook and his friends
to trace their origin were fruitless. At length, however,
some parties near Matlock, who till this present week
have extended their hospitalities to this impostor, hearing
that Dr. Hook was vigorously pursuing his inquiries after
her, became somewhat sceptical of the truth of the girl's
story, suddenly appeared with her at Leeds, on Monday
last. Although at this crisis she was warned and implored
by those who had the charge of her, and of whose bounty
she had so long partaken, not further to continue the im-
position if there was no truth in the statement which she
had so frequently and deliberately made to them, yet at
the hotel in Leeds, and up to the very moment when she
was about to be taken to Dr. Hook's house to be seen by
the family, (Dr. Hook being at that time abroad) she per-
sisted in the truth of all her previous statements, that she
was the daughter of Dr. Hook, and for many years had
lived with him and his family at the vicarage house, to
which she was then conducted. Immediately she was
brought into the presence of some of Dr. Hook's family and
friends, and being thus confronted, she for the first time
avowed her deception, and declared before the parties who
had brought her to Leeds that all she had before stated
for weeks together was utterly destitute of foundation
,that her name was not Eliza Hook, but Tremayne or
Lyons, that she came from the south, and for a time had
kept company with a girl leading a vagabondising life ;
that they were taken into custody for an offence at Liver-
pool ; that her companion was convicted and sentenced to
nine months' imprisonment; and that she (Miss Tremayne)
had the good fortune to be acquitted, since which time she
had practised her deceptions and concocted her narratives
to suit the exigencies of the time. In the midst of this
scene of consternation and mortification to the family which
had.thus been imposed upon and had brought her to Leeds,
and who then for the first time heard from the girl's lips
her repeated declaration that she had imposed upon them
by the vilest calumnies and lies, the Rev. Edwd. Jackson
entered the house of Dr. Hook, and immediately recognised
the woman as a person who about four years ago had been
found at Leeds in the streets in apparent destitution, and
she was then for a time provided with an asylum and a
situation, but she shortly afterwards absconded, having in
the meantime admitted that she had been in some goal ;
and to this incident all her imperfect knowledge of Dr.
Hook and his family may be traced, upon which she laid
the foundation of her deceptions, which she has practised
down to the present time. This woman had been en-

Ted in various parts of England, .and it probable

also in the neighbouithood of Dalin,-Passing -undeTtlhe
name of Eliza Hook, sometimes pretending to be the
daughter, and occasionally the grand-daughter of Dr. Hook,
practising with the most consummate skill and finesse
one of the grossest deceptions by a relation of incidents
and circumstances for which there never has been the re-
motest foundation. She has now been conveyed back in
the custody of the friends who brought her from the
neighbourhood of Matlock to Leeds, in order that a proper
example might be made of her. The whole history of the
girl's successfnl career as an accomplished impostor for the'
last few years, is a mixture of fiction, romance, and reality,
with which the incidents of ordinary life can bear no com-
parison.—Leeds Intelligencer.