“She then wrote again to the Commissioners, and said that she owed a small debt of £6 or £7 for the repairs of her cottage, but she said nothing of a Royal gift. He thereupon told her that if she went, she should have five shillings a week for the next year, and that would secure her a house in lieu of the one to which she had no legal right. He also gave her some money at once to pay for the repairs; but a builder afterwards called upon him, and said that she owed him his debt for the repairs of the cottage still. In fact, instead of paying the debt with the money he (Lord Seymour) had given her, she spent it in getting some placards printed and placing them about the Park, charging the Commissioners of Woods and Forests with hardship and oppression towards her. “As to any other cottage being erected in the Park, the only one he was aware of was the cottage proposed to be built by Prince Albert, as a model cottage. When it was built, he (Lord Seymour) said it could not be allowed to remain, and his Royal Highness promised that it should be taken down next November.” Besides this extremely grateful old lady, there were four other fruit-sellers evicted, and one of them afterwards memorialized a new Chief Commissioner as to compensation, or renewal, and some of the grounds on which the claim is based are somewhat curious: “That your petitioner, Charles Lacey, has several times assisted the park-keepers and other officials in the apprehension of various offenders, and also that he has himself, without the aid of either park-keepers, or other officials, apprehended and caused to be convicted other offenders, which must show to the public that he was not there for his interest alone, but that he protected the visitors from injury and insult; we therefore placed a firm reliance in the hope that a renewal would be granted for our ‘stand,’ which was neither unsightly, nor an obstruction; however, to our great disappointment, our appeal was non-suited. “The removal of our ‘stand’ has not only deprived us of the means of obtaining an honest livelihood, but, in fact, has compelled us to pledge and sell our very clothes to provide a subsistence. Nor is this the worst; the deprivation of the ‘stand’ occasioned such a shock to the female petitioner (Lacey’s wife) as to bring upon her a nervous excitement, under which she suffered intensely for upwards of eight months, and great doubts were entertained that she would have been deprived of her reason altogether. In addition to their other distresses, your petitioners regret, most painfully, to add that their daughter, eighteen years of age, at the present time lies dangerously ill of scarlet fever.”