The Australian 16th April, 1828 p.4
On the morning of the 4th Aug. two carriages, were seen driving with great rapidity towards the beach of Kingstown Bay, Dublin, where there lies moored a convict ship. The first was an open carriage, and from the elegance of its appointments, belonged to a person of rank. The travellers in this carriage were an elderly gentlemen and a lady, who, from her age and other circumstances, appeared to be his wife, and both seemed to lavish the most assiduous attentions on a young and lovely female, who sat beside them, holding an infant to her breast her head reclining on the bosom of the lady, and one of her hands clasped fondly by the old man, all apparently buried in profound grief.
The second carriage, which contained two persons, was surrounded by a military party. One of these persons was a young and handsome man, attired in the convict dress, and the other was presumed to be a prison officer. The former appeared to be of the better order of the peasantry, and exhibited in his manner a mind extremely agitated, while his eyes were strained towards the foremost carriage, and his looks appeared to rest entirely on the young female who sat fronting him within it.
As the carriages approached the beach, a boat put off from the convict ship; and reached the shore as they arrived. The travellers in the carriages were conveyed to the ship, from whence, some time after, the old gentleman and his supposed wife returned, much oppressed with grief, and ever and anon looking back to the ship to catch a last glimpse of their young companion, who remained on board with her infant. They almost immediately drove off in their carriage, leaving all the elderly tabbies of the good town of Kingstown quite in a quandary as to the extraordinary scene they had witnessed.
Subsequent inquiries, however, have discovered a solution to the affair by no means improbable to be the truth. It appears that the lady is Miss -—— . from the south of Ireland that she yielded to the secret impulses of her heart, and without the father’s knowledge, married a young tenant on his estate. Her husband, in the mean time, had become involved in the treasonable conspiracies which have kept the southern province of Ireland in a state of disturbance and was visited with the sentence of the law. The extent of his criminality precluded the possibility of pardon, and the affection of his wife would not permit her to remain behind, when the partner of her heart was doomed to perpetual banishment from his country. The elderly couple were of course the parents of the lady, and they had good cause for grief at parting for ever with their only child, whom they loved with all imaginable fondness, and whose loss they may be supposed to deplore with a grief proportionately severe.
