§ MR. H. A. HERBERTsaid, seeing his right hon. Friend the President of the Poor Law Board in his place, he begged to ask him a question with respect to a matter which excited very great interest in Ireland—inasmuch as the grievance complained of was a very common one. It appeared that in the month of February last, a woman named Brosnahan applied for relief at the Killarney Union, being then on her way to Tralee; and she made a statement to the magistrates there that she had been married in London, and that her husband had been for five years a policeman in London, and subsequently had been employed in various parts of that city—that, 2399 in fact, she had been between ten and twelve years a resident in London. Her husband, however, subsequently deserted her, or left her with her own consent; and, although she stated most positively that the man had been born in England, yet, when she applied for relief at the Holborn Union, she was shipped on board the Bittern steamer and left to perish on the pier at Cork in a state of destitution. He would, therefore, ask his hon. Friend whether his attention had been called to the circumstances of the removal of a female pauper, named Honora Brosnahan, and her children, from the Holborn Union to Ireland; whether he had reason to believe that the said Honora Brosnahan's husband was born in England; and whether any remedy existed by the present law for the injustice inflicted on the woman herself and on the Tralee Union in Ireland, to which she had been removed?
§ MR. BOUVERIEsaid, his attention had been called to the case through a communication from the Poor Law Commissioners of Ireland who, in their turn, had been attracted to it by the guardians of the Tralee Union. Inquiries had, therefore, been instituted into the circumstances by the English Poor Law Board, which elicited the following facts:—As the woman was the wife of a man who had been in the police in England, and the husband had deserted her and her children when she applied for relief to the Holborn Union, the question arose whether they were bound to give her relief—whether, in point of fact, she was settled or irremovable in that union. The guardians alleged that there was no evidence offered to them of any kind that the husband of the woman Brosnahan was either born or settled in England. It was disproved that there was any claim to irremovability on the ground of five years' residence, which was what was required by the law; and consequently the guardians were entitled to remove her to Ireland. The woman had stated subsequently that her husband was born in England, and that he had a settlement in some parish in this country; but the truth was, the statement was not supported by the evidence which would be requisite in a court of law. And he must add, that the guardians of the Holborn Union had assured the Board that the woman had of herself consented to go to Ireland, and that she had been treated with the greatest kindness previous to her transmission. He 2400 could not avoid stating that the relief of this very class of cases, which were so much to be deplored, was attempted by the Bill which he had the honour to introduce last Session of Parliament, but which unfortunately, as he thought, had not received the concurrence of the House.