A Boy's Appeal.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 398, 31 August 1889, Page 3

A Boy's Appeal.

The duties' of a Lord Mayor are -numerous and varied, but it is .seldom that a Chief Magistrate has received a more singular application than the which reached the Lord Mayor last week from a lad in America : — ' Jutfe'lE. — Kind Friend, — I thought I would write you i few lines and ask a favour of you, as I am alone in America. I have a father and mother in England, besides the remainder of my friends. Kind friend, ,1 would to ask you if^you. would please try and find' some of thefai for.me. My mother's name'is Esther , and my father's Thomas. I was* their child, and when I was, ten or eleven yearsold my father used bo get dr-unk an&".b\ea.jb my mother and me. We ,wer.e living in Poplar then, but my mother ran ~a|vay from him and went to Bow, and left me with him. I stayed with him for. two x or three months, and he told me I had better, gp.to work', and nob go to school. ,1, tried,.to get. work, but I could not, and when he-came home I told him, but he was drunk,, and he beat me till I was black an<jT blue. 'I left him the n,ext day and wandereci.away, 1 1 do not know where. 1 went to a baker's shop and stole some rolls. The baker had me arrested, and I was sent to the Middlesex Industrial School. I stayed there about eighteen months, and they, sent me to Canada, and I worked ori a farm for, two years. I left, and 'came on here. I have earned my living selling -papers' and^blaciring shoes, ' b*ut I KaYe sforted'tb • learn a trade, and I think I will -fee able to save, some money after a while,; and pay for the trouble 1 am putting you to. My father was a stevedore in the docks, and the men used to call him. "Corporal" for a nickname. I had an uncle Charley and aunt Carry. My grandi father used to drive a'cab, arid he" vfaesdamor in one of his legs. They used to live in a, house by the side of a" graveyard sin. ) Hackney. I had also an uncle Tdm ; but- he got drowned ori the H.M.S. Eurydic'e. Kind friend, this is all I have to' ask of you, ' and, l think you will be kindenough to help* a poor orphan boy,''so I- remain yours Thomas .P. & ! — May the Lord in tfCeatf'en bless you for your kindness. -To the,Larji. Mayor, London." .On* the receipt), of. this letter, the -Lord (Mayor requested the City police to find the lads friends trough' the' lew clues given by, him, and it is satiifac-. t6ry to state that, after two days' search 'by ' an experienced detective, the famrly'Sverefound,in the East* .End of London. "The boy's father had died since the lad hadleft home, and the child himself had bTeet},givenr up as irretrievably lost. iThe joy of -the mother and his other relatives at tihe tjdings,' of his safety was, according to the.rpporb o£ the police, touching , to witness, an,d the. Lord Mayor > lost no , time in 1 writing tp the boy in America,- giving him the addresses of 'his friends. „