The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-08-29
After Fifty Years.

A striking illustration of the French proverb Trout vient b ut pour qui salt attendre";-which may be freely rendered 'If you can only manage to wait long enough you will get what you want"-has been afforded by the strange ard romantic recovery of a sum of money invested in Man. chester savings bank half century ago by a woman who was convicted and sentenced to seven years transpor- tation at the assizes held in that city in the year 1s44 Before committing the offense for. which she was sent to the Antipodes, this person-at that time domestic serysnt.-had deposited her savings to the amount of fs6, with the
 bank in question, As the property of convicts was confiscated to the crown in those days, it is to presumed that at the expiration of her sentence she gave no further thought to the money which had been hers, deeming that she had forfeited it irretrevably by commit ting felony. At any rate she never made application for its restitution, or put forward any claim to it what ever.
 As it happened, the government re- trained from exercising its rights of confiscation with, respect of this sum, although some twenty years after it's original owner had left her country for her country's good" the authorities were officially apprised that this par ticular deposit was still lying at inter- est in the savings bank. and was legal ly at their disposal. About year and half ago the niece and sole heir of the convicted woman obtained possession of the bank book recording the amount deposited, and took it to the mayor of Middleton in the hope that his worship might exert his influence to bring about the recovery of the money and its transfer to the convicts only surviving relative, herself person in very indigent circumstances.
 The mayor, Mr. John Thorpe. at once instituted inquiries at the bank, the principals of which institution in- formed him that the deposit was still in their keeping, and advised him to search for the marriage certificate of the depositor. Having succeeded in this quest. he sought for further infor- nation respecting the missing convict, applying first to the clerk of peace at Preston,A and secondly to the governor of Millbank penitentiary-in both cases withoutsresutt. He then communicated with the Home office; and was informed inSdue course that the woman named in his memorial, having been sentenced. to seven years transportation in 1894, had been. saonyeyed to- Tasmania early in the following year, since which time all trace of her had been lost, at least the governor of Hobart town, to whom however, something might be learned about her subsequent proceedings from the gvernor of Hobart town, to whom MT. Thorpe accordingly; wrote upon the subject. receiving prompt reply to the effect that the convict in question had ] arrived there in 1S45 and had been lib- erated in 1S49, two years before the end of her term, on account of good con. duct. 'Since then," his excellency add. ed, nothing had been heard of her, and, If still alive she must be eighty. five years of age"
 | After receiving this intelligence MT. Thorpe continued to prosecute his in. quiries indefatigably, with the assis- tance of the solicitors to the treasury and duchy of Lancaster. his double ob- ject being to ascertain beyond dispute
 whether the ex-convict were dead or alive. and, if the former, whether or not the person who had appealed to him
 were really the only just inheritbr of her property. Eventually the worthy mayors benevolent perseverance prov ed successful in bringing about "a. final settlement of this "vexed question !
 with the satisfactory, result that the lamount of f275, principal and accumu. Hated interest of the original deposit
 was paid over to the protegee, the ex. convict's niece a few days ago. Truth Is, indeed. often stranger than fiction
 even in these somewhat prosaic and lmatter-of-fact dayso.eLondon Daily kT0ograph.
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