Читать книгу Twenty Years' Recollections of an Irish Police Magistrate - Frank Thorpe Porter - Страница 15

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There was another Dublin establishment in the gold, silver, and jewelry trade, and also belonging to a Mr. West. It was in Capel Street. I may mention an incident connected with it of a very extraordinary nature. There were mills at Chapelizod, near Dublin, kept by a Mr. M'Garry, in which he had very powerful machinery for rolling metals. He was frequently employed to roll silver for Mr. West. In the year 1829, a silver slab, valued at £27, was delivered to his carrier at Capel Street, and the usual receipt was given for it. The slab was to be rolled into a silver sheet; but when the vehicle in which it had been placed arrived at Chapelizod, the article was not to be found. In appearance it was not bright, having lain in store for some time after being cast. Advertisements and enquiries failed to discover it, and Mr. M'Garry paid its value to the owner. In 1845, it was brought to a silversmith named Chapman, on Essex Quay, and offered for sale. Chapman stopped the article, and gave the bearer of it into custody. On an investigation before me, it appeared that a shoemaker who lived in Leixlip had found it on the road and taken it home with him. He never suspected that it was silver. He considered it to be pewter or zinc, and it was used for the purposes of a lapstone for sixteen years. How the person in whose possession it was found had ascertained its real quality did not appear, but he had purchased it from the shoemaker for half-a-crown. West's and M'Garry's books coincided as to the nature of the article, its value, and the time of its loss. The old slab was adjudged to M'Garry, who at once sold it to Chapman for the price he offered, £22. The shoemaker expressed deep, and certainly sincere regret that he had never suspected the real value of his lapstone. His only consolation was, that the roguish fellow who induced him to sell it for half-a-crown, lost two shillings and sixpence by the bargain.