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[Illustration: CHAMBERS'S JOURNAL

OF

POPULAR

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.

Fourth Series

CONDUCTED BY WILLIAM AND ROBERT CHAMBERS.

NO. 713.      SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 1877.      PRICE 1½_d._]




A STRANGE FAMILY HISTORY.


For the following curious episode of family history we are indebted to
a descendant of one of the chief personages involved; his story runs as
follows.

Somewhat less than one hundred years ago, a large schooner, laden with
oranges from Spain, and bound for Liverpool, was driven by stress of
weather into the Solway Firth, and after beating about for some time,
ran at last into the small port of Workington, on the Cumberland
coast. For several previous days some of the crew had felt themselves
strangely 'out of sorts,' as they termed it; were depressed and
languid, and greatly inclined to sleep; but the excitement of the
storm and the instinct of self-preservation had kept them to their
duties on deck. No sooner, however, had the vessel been safely moored
in the harbour than a reaction set in; the disease which had lurked
within them proclaimed its power, and three of them betook themselves
to their hammocks more dead than alive. The working-power of the ship
being thus reduced and the storm continuing, the master determined to
discharge and sell his cargo on the spot. This was done. But his men
did not recover; he too was seized with the same disease; and before
many days were past most of them were in the grave. Ere long several of
the inhabitants of the village were similarly affected, and some died;
by-and-by others were smitten down; and in less than three weeks after
the arrival of the schooner it became evident that a fatal fever or
plague had broken out amongst the inhabitants of the village.

The authorities of the township took alarm; and under the guidance of
Squire Curwen of Workington Hall, all likely measures were taken to
arrest or mitigate the fatal malady. Among other arrangements, a band
of men was formed whose duties were to wait upon the sick, to visit
such houses as were reported or supposed to contain victims of the
malady, and to carry the dead to their last home.

Among the first who fell under this visitation was a man named John
Pearson, who, with his wife and a daughter, lived in a cottage in
the outskirts of the village. He was employed as a labourer in an
iron foundry close by. For some weeks his widow and child escaped the
contagion; but ere long it was observed that their cottage window was
not opened; and a passer-by stopping to look at the house, thought
he heard a feeble moan as from a young girl. He at once made known
his fears to the proper parties, who sent two of the 'plague-band'
to examine the case. On entering the abode it was seen that poor Mrs
Pearson was a corpse; and her little girl, about ten years old, was
lying on her bosom dreadfully ill, but able to cry: 'Mammy, mammy!' The
poor child was removed to the fever hospital, and the mother to where
her husband had been recently taken. How long the plague continued
to ravage the village, I am not able to say; but as it is about the
Pearson family, and not about the plague I am going to write, such
information may be dispensed with.

The child, Isabella Pearson, did not die; she conquered the foe, and
was left to pass through a more eventful life than that which generally
falls to the lot of a poor girl. Although an orphan, she was not
without friends; an only and elder sister was with relatives in Dublin,
and her father's friends were well-to-do farmers in Westmoreland.
Nor was she without powerful interest in the village of her birth:
Lady Curwen, of the Hall, paid her marked attention, as she had done
her mother, because that mother was of noble descent, as I shall now
proceed to shew.

Isabella Pearson (mother of the child we have just spoken of), whose
maiden name was Day, was a daughter of the Honourable Elkanah Day
and of his wife Lady Letitia, daughter of the Earl of Annesley. How
she came to marry John Pearson forms one of the many chapters in
human history which come under the head of Romance in Real Life,
or Scandal in High Life, in the newspaper literature of the day.
Isabella's parents were among those parents who believe they are at
liberty to dispose of their daughters in marriage just as they think
fit, even when the man to whom the girl is to be given is an object
of detestation to her. Heedless of their daughter's feelings in the
matter, they had bargained with a man of