Carriages from the old London and South Western Railway, at Sheffield Park on the preserved Bluebell Line in Sussex: see The Bluebell Line.
Part 1 of 2
AN incident of an amusing though of a rather serious nature occurred some years ago on the London and South-Western Railway. A gentleman, whose place of residence was Maple Derwell, near Basingstoke, got into a first-class carriage at the Waterloo terminus, with the intention of proceeding home by one of the mainline down trains.*
His only fellow-passengers in the compartment were a lady and an infant, and another gentleman, and thus things remained until the arrival of the train at Walton, where the other gentleman left the carriage, leaving the first gentleman with the lady and child. Shortly after this the train reached the Weybridge station, and on its stopping the lady, under the pretence of looking for her servant or carriage, requested her male fellow-passenger to hold the infant for a few minutes while she went to search for what she wanted.
* LSWR trains began running between Waterloo and Basingstoke in 1839. A Down train is a train travelling away from London; a train travelling towards London is an Up train.
Précis
It seems that early in the days of the Waterloo to Basingstoke railway line, a Victorian commuter returning from the capital shared a compartment with a lady and her baby. On reaching Weybridge, the lady stepped out onto the platform, promising to return shortly, and left the helpless gentleman quite literally holding the baby. (54 / 60 words)
Part Two
‘Master Baby’ by Scottish artist William Quiller Orchardson (1832–1910).
The bell rang for the starting of the train and the gentleman thus strangely left with the baby began to get rather fidgety, and anxious to return his charge to the mother.
The lady, however, did not again put in any appearance, and the train went on without her, the child remaining with the gentleman, who, on arriving at his destination took the child home to his wife and explained the circumstance under which it came into his possession. No application has, at present, it is understood, been made for the ‘lost child,’ which has for the nonce been adopted by the gentleman and his wife, who, it is said, are without any family of their own.
Précis
The gentleman watched the preparations for departure with rising anxiety, and when the carriages began to roll the lady still had not returned. At Basingstoke, he had little choice but to go home and place the extraordinary facts before his wife. The kindly couple, being childless themselves, assumed responsibility for the baby, unless some claim should be made. (58 / 60 words)
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