Case 1294

Children's Hospital
Sevenoaks
April 18, 1888

E will be 2 years old on 6th of May. The father who died on 25th of Jan. of this year was a most respectable young fellow for some time before his death he knew that he had heart disease, but would not tell his friends because he was so anxious to serve his apprenticeship & kept hoping that when it was over & he had not so much to do he should be stronger. He moved from Marylebone Lane to Tadmor St Shepherds Bush because the doctors told him the air would be better there & he had not so many stairs to go up & down. He had only one more day to serve when he came home & said to his wife he should never go to work again & that night acute inflammation of the lungs came on & he only lingered about 3 weeks. He had been one of my Sunday School boys about ten years before he begged his mother to ask me to come to him He then told me one great trouble in going away was leaving his little girl - that his wife was an ignorant girl, who had been brought up by a mother who would pawn her children's clothes & leave them naked to get drunk that she encouraged this girl to lead a miserable life, also that though she his wife seemed to have some motherly feeling for the baby she had none for this little girl & would beat & ill treat her. Since the father's death both the landlady & the grandmother on the father's side tell the same story that the mother who is not yet 21 seems to be entirely under the influence of her own people who are a bad lot & that she neglects her children & ill treats this poor little mite (one of her sisters is said to steal jewellery & the man she is living with to get his living by buying & selling stolen jewellery. The relations on the father's side are very respectable but very poor & not in a position to adopt the child or I believe they would.

May Rose (Miss)