A strange story was told before the Lord Mayor on
Wednesday. W. G. Davies, twenty-two, a salesman in the employ of Messrs. Leaf, fell in love with a public woman named Ellen Grantham, and she lived with him as his wife. Finding that he could not maintain her, and dreading, he says, above all things that she should return to the streets, he purloined one by one sixty pieces of silk from his employers, but as he took each piece surcharged ordinary customers with their value, thinking, apparently, that to rob them was somehow a less offence than to rob a maater,—per- baps because the customer had the option of refusing to buy. At last he broke off the connection, and then Ellen Grantham, whom he entirely exonerates from the theft, took the pawn tickets for the silk to the police. She was, nevertheless, sent for trial as an ac- complice. It would appear probable that Davies really loved the girl, believed in her fully, and nursed her assiduously when sick ; and it is curious that had he had the moral courage to marry her, her testimony against him could not have been received.
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