The world wagged on—a large Monkey or Baboon escaped from a sailor down at the docks and made a Frightful Attack upon a mother and child; the Glasgow Herald fulminated against the indiscriminate use of Turkish Baths; the Beautiful very Fast Sailing Clipper ship Edouard et Julie, newly coppered, was still actively Loading and would soon set sail for Singapore. In Paris an old gentleman who thought he was Robespierre was visited by a relative unaware of his peculiarity and, crying out ‘He is the gendarme Metra, behind him is the coward Louis Bourdon!’ jumped out of a window and killed himself. You could go by Cheap Midday Sail to Renfrew, Bowling, Greenock and Dunoon, fares for the round one shilling, steerage sixpence.… On the Tuesday, Mrs Reid, James M’Lachlan’s sister, who was closest to her brother and evidently devoted to him, decided to go to the Broomielaw and bring back his little boy, who all this time had presumably been still in the care of Mrs Campbell. But her brother met her in Glasgow and warned her not to go near the house; it was swarming with police, she’d only be arrested herself (for her part in harbouring the box of clothes?) and she had better go back home.
