| Examination Text | The Examination of Mary Dunster the wife of John Dunster in the workhouse of and in the Parish of St Martin in the Fields taken upon oath this 18th Day of December 1753. This Examinant on her oath saith that she is 27 years of age and is the wife of John Dunster to whom she was married at the ffleet about 10 years ago, that before his intermarriage he was a yearly hired servant in the capacity of a Footman to Charles Monson Esq in George Street York Buildings in the said Parish of St Martin in the Fields for the space of two years at the yearly wages of 6 pounds diet and lodging and continued in that service about 10 months after his marriage, that he never kept house rented a tenement of 10 pounds by the year paid any parish taxes nor was a yearly hired servant in any one place for 12 months together afterwards, And this Examinant on her voluntary oath further saith that she was on the 24th Day of November last passed delivered in the workhouse aforesaid of a female bastard child (since christened Ann) yet living and become chargeable to the said Parish of St Martin in the Fields, and that Thomas Collins the Elder a Sawyer at Putney in the County of Surry had, some time in the month of November which is in the year 1752, carnal knowledge of her body upon a bed in a fore room on the one pair of stairs floor at the house of William Norton (this Examinant's Father) at Putney in the County of Surry and several times afterwards at different times and places at which or one which times he the said Thomas Collins did beget on her body the said female bastard child, and that he the said Thomas Collins is the true and only father thereof and no man else, and this Examinant also on her oath further saith that in the month of August 1744 she this Examinant saw her said husband confined in the Tower of London as an impressed man to be sent the Nova Scotia, and that she never did see him since, but that about a week afterwards she this examinant received a letter from him, then on board the Ann and Margaret Galley in Portsmouth Harbour, and believes that the said letter was of his own handwriting, and this Examinant further saith that from the time of begetting the said child on the body of her this Examinant to the birth thereof she never saw or heard from her said husband. Sworn the day and year abovesaid before Benjamin Cox. |
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