"In the years 1873-1876 I was carrying on a general practice in a quarter of Birmingham. I was, in fact, a sixpenny doctor, charging that sum for advice and medicine, and having a fairly good reputation among the poorer class of that quarter. On a certain afternoon in February, 1874"--here the witness referred to his books--"a lady entered the surgery. She was deeply veiled, and in much trouble. She told me that she wanted to adopt a child in the place of her own, whom she had just lost by death. She asked me, further, if I knew of any poor woman who would give up her child. It was to be about fifteen months old. She gave the date of her dead child's birth as December the 2nd, 1872. And it must have light hair and blue eyes. "Among my patients was a woman left penniless by her husband, who had deserted her. She wanted, above all things, money to go in search of him. As he was an actor in a small way, she thought it would be easy to find him if she had money to travel with. The woman was mad with grief. She was ready to give up the child in return for the money she wanted. At the time, she would have given up her own soul for the money. The child was somewhere about the required age--a month more or less mattered little; it had blue eyes and light hair. I made the arrangement with her. I took the child, also by arrangement, to the Great Western Railway Station, and gave it to an Indian ayah, who carried it into a first-class carriage, where the lady sat. Then the train went off, and I saw nothing more of the lady or the child for twenty-four years. "I did not know, nor did I ask, the lady's name or address; only on a half-torn envelope, in which she had placed the notes--ten five-pound notes--for the mother of the child, was the word, 'Lady W----,' as part of an address. "I did not know, nor did I ask, the lady's intentions. She said she wanted to adopt a child. I arranged this for her. I took the mother the sum of fifty pounds, and I charged the lady a fee of three guineas. The only question we discussed was that of heredity, and especially the danger of the child inheriting criminal tendencies. "Four and twenty years later I received a visit--being then a physician practising in London--from the mother of the child, who had remembered my name. She was anxious to learn, if possible, what had become of her son. She had become rich, and would willingly claim the child.