.
O'Hara, two of the assistant-nurses, of whom two could swear
positively to Mrs. Howard's identity with the lady who came and took
away the child. The third nurse was in doubt.

The Solicitor-General, who represented the infant-claimant, thereupon
requested an adjournment, in order to meet the new case thus
presented. Their lordships, however, refused to comply with his desire
until they had had an opportunity of examining Mrs. Howard; but when
that lady was called she did not appear, and it was discovered that
she had left the House of Lords secretly, and could not be found at
her lodgings or discovered elsewhere. The case was therefore
adjourned. At the next sitting, a week later, Mrs. Howard appeared
before the committee, but refused to be sworn, demanding that the
witnesses who were to be brought against her should be examined first.
As she persisted in her refusal, she was given into custody for
contempt of court, and the evidence of the Liverpool witnesses was
taken. As Sir Roundell Palmer had stated, while one of the nurses
remembered the transaction she could not be positive that Mrs. Howard
was the party concerned in it; but the two others, and Mary Best the
child's mother, had no hesitation in asserting that she was the person
who had taken away the infant from the hospital. Towards the close of
the sitting it was announced that a telegram had been received from
Boulogne, stating that the real purchasers of Mary Best's child had
been found, and that they would be produced at the next hearing of the
case to re-but the Liverpool evidence; but when the next sitting came
no Boulogne witnesses were forthcoming, and the Solicitor-General was
compelled to state that he had been on the wrong scent; but that he
would be able to refute the story which had been trumped up against
his client. Mary Best was placed in the witness-box, and, in the
course of a rigorous cross-examination, admitted that she had left the
workhouse with a baby which she had passed off as her own. She stated
that this child was given to her while she was in the workhouse, but
she could not tell either its mother's name or the name of the person
who gave it to her. She had never received any payment for it, but had
fed and clothed it at her own expense, had taken it with her to her
father's house in Yorkshire, had represented it as her own to her
family, and had paid the costs of its burial when it died. Her
relatives and friends were produced, a