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Sir Robert Carden, who introduced us the other day at the Mansion House to the young sprawling vagabonds, a brother and sister, who were earning their livelihood by gyrating along the pavement much in the shape of the cab-wheels they often managed to outrun, did us on Tuesday the further service of making known to us another of his acquaintance, quite as remarkable in her way—“a young slender woman, about twenty years of age, with a decidedly Indian complexion, well dressed, and with very artless, lady-like manners,” who by his kindness, her cleverness, and our notice, is destined to an immortality which, if less respectable than that of Agamemnon, may, at all events, compare advantageously with those of Jack Sheppard or Dick Turpin, or even Bampfylde Moore Carew.
Miss Annette De Ros—the heroine of our romance—seems to have had enough confidence in the letter of introduction contained in those personal charms attractively depicted for us even by one who is evidently speaking “more in sorrow than in anger” of them, to have presented herself at Sir Robert Carden’s office with no farther credentials. Nothing could be more simple, nothing more sympathetic—alas! that we must add it—nothing more ingenious than the tale she had to tell. She was the niece of Sir Stafford Carey, the governor of Guernsey. She could have mentioned no better name, for Sir Robert knew him—but knew him, fortunately, only by repute. She had incurred a loss in her way to rejoin her home at Guernsey, which she felt all the more severely that she had no acquaintances in London. It was strange, no doubt, that the niece of the governor of Guernsey should be without an acquaintance in London! But, then, has not the worthy magistrate daily heard from us and a hundred other of the people’s best possible instructors that truth is stranger than fiction?—the point of greater strangeness suggesting a more compendious mode of finding out what is true than the old troublesome process of diving to the bottom of the well. She had arrived, she said, with her luggage at the Waterloo station, on her way to Guernsey, but disobeying the positive instructions of her uncle not to go anywhere from the station, she was unable—as became a pious young lady—to resist the desire of seeing St. Paul’s Cathedral. Though the Rev. Sidney Smith—himself a canon—left behind him a rather unfavourable impression of the nicety of principle of the chiefs of that reverend establishment, it was not till the young lady had left its precincts and had entered a confectioner’s near by, that she missed her portemonnaie containing eight pounds in gold, which—truth is fond of details in the mouth of woman—she carried in the side pocket of a loose-fitting jacket which she wore. Though the concern of Miss Annette De Ros herself was evidently far less at the loss of the money than at her disobedience to the positive commands of her uncle, the worthy magistrate felt that her return to her uncle raised a little question of money, nevertheless, and, gallantly placing at her service a vehicle, conducted her to the South-Western Railway Station, where, paying her fare to Guernsey, he pressed upon her acceptance, for the petty expenses inevitable on her way, the silver he had received in change at the ticket-office.
Of course Sir Robert Carden was had, and his philanthropy in the result suggested much the same associations as Shakespeare connects with “Jove in a thatched cottage.” It had been terribly out of its place. The interesting romancist passed by Guernsey as though the uncles she perchance might have had there were by no means persons whose acquaintance she would make without necessity, and, proceeding to Jersey, presented to a lady at the head of a boarding-house where she took up her abode, the alderman’s card, as that of a friend to whom she was well known. Her next appearance on the scene was as the lodger of the Rev. Mr. M‘Carthy, a Roman Catholic clergyman in the island, who, moved by another tale of distress, as adroitly prepared, could not find it in his heart to shut his door against a fellow religionist, who had not only lost her luggage, but was the niece of his countryman, Sir Denis Kelly. Under the countenance given by so respectable an asylum, her cheque on Coutts’s for a modest eight pounds was cashed by one of the island banks, and by the time it returned with the expressive “no effects,” the lady, making wings of its proceeds, had directed her flight to a more favourable latitude. The publicity, which for the purposes of public protection Sir Robert Carden gave to this interesting narrative, attracted communications, which showed that the lady “with the decidedly Indian complexion” had not tried her ‘prentice hand on the London alderman. {There is, it seems, a certain detective officer who has been more busy in acquiring a knowledge of the whole history of the young adventuress than preventing its development; and from him and other sources it turns out that it is not only one man, but one woman who “in her time may play many parts,” and that the Annette De Ros of Sir Robert Carden and the Reverend Mr. McCarthy is the interesting Lola Fernandez who in January, 1860, made her appearance before the same magistrate with a long tale about Brazils and the question of a passage to Hong-Kong in a Government transport. By one sort of assistance or another she managed at that time to get her passage freed to India, and availing herself of the services of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company fixed herself for a time at Macao. The heroic attachments which her romantic beauty and simple charms of manner won among the male, and the jealousies they excited among the female passengers on that long and adventurous journey, will, no doubt, some day be made known to us by the aforesaid detective, who, at the request of Sir Richard Mayne, has reduced her history, we are told, “into a consecutive form”; but at Macao her success is stated to be that of a perfect furore, and at what price a certain Portuguese merchant atoned for the absurdity of a wild devotion to the travelling inconnue will probably never be known unless the police make the disclosure they have thus been threatening us with. But it seems certain that she managed some time last spring to wing her way back to Europe—and we should think with rather damaged plumage—for in the first exploit we have she rather disgraced her undoubted skill in diplomacy by submitting to outwit an ambassador who has shown his qualities now for several years by receiving, without any scruples of conscience, some thousands per annum from this country for believing everything Napoleon III. or M. de Thouvenel may tell him. To Lord Cowley her name was Annette Hilton, and her story that she had left India under a broken promise of marriage; and as the charity of the ambassador found the testimony of “her decidedly Indian complexion and simple ladylike manners” supported by an hotel bill of over five pounds, incurred in two days, he felt no hesitation in wiping off the score, and leaving her with a small supply to meet future contingencies. An attempt on the American Minister was, of course, less successful; but her Majesty’s consul at Marseilles, following the usual precedent of British official sagacity, fell an easy victim to the snare which had caught his chief at Paris. An unexpected intervention destroying an arrangement cleverly made, and so preventing her return to India, there seems to have remained nothing for her but to try her fortune in London again; and having managed to obtain a letter from Cardinal Wiseman, she had set on foot a deep-laid scheme, which promised we hardly dare say what pecuniary advantages, when an unfortunate visit of hers to the Oriental Bank revealed and baffled the scheme. It is not said that the young lady laid the failure of her fraud as a crime at the door of the cardinal who had been assisting her, but it is sad to observe that, as though she had, she seems to have made it her chief business to avenge her misfortune on his priests. Two rev. gentlemen at Aldershot and one at Guildford, in addition to the unfortunate Mr. M‘Carthy of Jersey, were among the next of her victims, and it may be a suggestion worthy of the attention of the Propaganda of Rome, in the leisure afforded it by the lively interest of the French in all that concerns temporal matters, how far this young lady, by her special predilection for cardinals and their clergymen, may not be an emissary of Exeter Hall, set up, with her modest “Indian complexion” and “artless demeanour,” to play off a little Protestant opposition to the abominations of the Scarlet Lady.
— London Evening Standard, Thursday 02 October 1862 source
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A FEMALE SWINDLER.
A few days ago at the Mansion House, London, Sir Robert Carden warned the public against a young woman, who goes under the name of Annette de Ros, and who had succeeded in imposing upon several persons by most plausible stories. Sir Robert stated on Tuesday that he had received several letters which go far to confirm his apprehensions that she is practising a systematic course of imposture. An English gentleman, residing in Paris, states that he had read Sir Robert’s account of Annette de Ros, and he has little doubt that she is the same person who, under the name of Annette Hilton, imposed upon Lord Cowley at Paris last spring. He had forgotten the exact particulars of the story she then told; but, as far as he could remember, it was a tale, very cleverly and plausibly related, of having been induced to leave India under a promise of marriage. The Ambassador was induced to advance her a small sum for her immediate wants and to pay her bill at the hotel, which the writer thought amounted to over £5 for two days. In July last she again came to Paris, and then applied for assistance to Mr. Dayton, the American minister, who, finding some discrepancies in her story, declined to relieve her. The writer had since learnt that she was known at Marseilles, where she imposed upon her Majesty’s consul by a story similar to that she told Lord Cowley; and he was also informed that orders were given to the agent for the boats conveying the Indian mail from Marseilles to refuse her a passage back to India, for reasons assigned. Again, Mr. C. W. Howell, of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, has written to Sir Robert, stating his conviction that “Annette de Ros” is identified with the “Lola Fernandez” who was before the Alderman in January, 1860, in connection with a passage to Hong Kong in a Government transport. Her predilection for travel, he says, has brought her under his notice at different times, and about three months ago she favoured him with a visit, during which he was entirely deceived by her manner. His suspicion, however, was aroused by circumstances she referred to, and, having followed her to the Oriental Bank, he found she had a deep-laid scheme on foot, based on a letter she had managed to obtain from Cardinal Wiseman. He lost no time in seeing a detective police officer, who knew her history, and her proceedings were stopped as she was stepping into the Dover mail train. Mr. Howell adds that the career of this young woman is perfectly marvellous, and he believed the detective officer to whom he alluded had, at the request of Sir Richard Mayne, reduced it to a consecutive form. A third letter had been received from Guildford, thanking the Alderman for having called public attention to the matter, for the woman in question, the writer said, had imposed upon two Catholic priests, at the camp at Aldershot, and also upon a Roman Catholic priest at Guildford, by telling a story to the effect that she was a good, but poor, Catholic, who had just then arrived from India in a state of distress.
— Manchester Courier, Saturday 04 October 1862 source
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THE ACCOMPLISHED FEMALE SWINDLER.
Alderman Sir Robert Carden continues to receive letters from different parts of the country confirmatory of the statement he recently made from the bench respecting the young woman calling herself Annette de Ros. Two letters have been addressed to him by gentlemen who had been staying at Vichy, in France, during the summer of this year. There, one of them states, a young woman exactly answering her description had imposed on many of the English residents, and himself among the rest. She had assumed the name of the ancient Lancashire family of “De Trafford.” On her first arrival she made incidental allusions to her future prospects, stating that on coming of age she would be entitled to £40,000, but that she was fleeing for refuge from the persecution of a relentless uncle residing in London, who wanted her to marry an old but very rich gentleman against her will. At length the English residents in the hotels raised a subscription among themselves, amounting to about 200f., to pay her expenses to London. On Saturday Sir Robert Carden received a letter to the effect that the young woman in question was then staying at a fashionable watering-place in Dorset.
— The Scotsman, Wednesday 08 October 1862 source