Weekly News. — 1889-12-05 (Blandford, Dorset, England)

NEW ENOCH ARDEN.  Considerable excitement prevails in Greenwich and Deptford in consequence of the unexpected appearance of a man believed to have been drowned at sea 30 years ago. Tim man in question, William Henry Parker, arrived in England two or three weeks ago, and has since been busily engaged in searching for his wife. On Saturday he succeeded in discovering her whereabouts, only to find, however, that she, believing him dead, had married • respectable mechanic, and was the mother of • grown-up family. As may readily be imagined, his unexpected appearance in the family circle created a great amount of consternation. His wile, notwithstanding the lapse of years, recognised him immediately, both by his voice and personal appearance. It appears that in the spring of 1857, Parker shipped in a vessel called the William and Mary, as a common seaman, for Quebec). On the return journey Parker one evening fell overboard. Boats were lowered and every effort made to save him, but he could not be found, and it was fully believed he was drowned. The captain, on the arrival of the vessel in London, reported his death, and his supposed widow mourned for him as dead, two years afterwards marrying a brass-finisher, with whom she is now living in East Greenwilith, and by whom she has a family of five grown-up eons. Parker states when he fell overboard he drifted some distance from the vessel before the William and Mary could lower her boats, and was finally picked up by a Portuguese vessel bound for South America, where he was landed. He has had an adventurous career, at one period being forced into the service of • pirate. At another time he was unconscious or delirious with the fever at Palermo, no one knowing who or what he was, while on yet another occasion he was taken prisoner in the American civil war while running the blockade with provisions fog the South. He found his way to the gold fields, and is now worth a fair amount of money. Parker gives no explanation of his failure to communicate with England. He believes that his wife has been happy with her second husband. A solicitor has been instructed to make some amicable arrangement in this strange affair.  Lord Salisbury, says a Leeds contemporary, is not • great reader of newmpapere. The only daily papers at which he looks regularly are the Times and Standard; but his secretaries cut out for him tele. grams in the other papers which may deserve his attention as Foreign Secretary. Be never looks at Liberal newspapers, and derives his knowledge of Liberal opinions from speeches of Liberal politi. (dans. The provincial press is to him an unknown quantity, and of the newer Radical journals he scarcely seems to know the existence. What is stranger still, he never looks nt the Saturday Review, in which he first practised his satiric and saturnine pen. The only weekly paper which he looks at is the Guardian.  wain= brown has been arrested in Leeds, obargod with the murder of Annie Osborne. On Saturday night he quarrelled with his wife in the street, and was advised by some women to go home. Enraged, be ran after them, and kicked Osborne so seriously that she died.  There- was an exciting scene the other day at a wild beast show at Maryport. A negro wad pi.tting some wolves through their performance, when one of them attacked ham savagely. The wolf had to be beaten off oath an iron bar, and bit the negit..very mannieiy before it loosed its hold.