Snell M’Snooker presents his compliments to Mrs Lockly

Glasgow Weekly Mail, Saturday 01 January 1881

She broke open the seal, and read as follows :—

“Snell M’Snooker presents his compliments to Mrs Lockly. Dear Madam, I beg to state that I looked out for Mrs Bowster’s lodgings in Gavtield Square, but no one of that name is to be found there. I asked in the neighbourhood if any one had seen or known a dark-coloured gentleman named Mr Ramjam Babba, who waseithera North American Indian or a Hottentot, or a cross between the two, but only got laughed at. I then asked a servant in a dairy, who said that the only one who answered that description was an African sweep in Haddington Place. Called on that gentleman accordingly, but found that he was no blackamore at all, but an Irishman with a remarkably dirty face which he never inherited from nature. This gentleman said he wasn’t aware of any man of colour residing in that locality; and he said he wouldn’t be surprised if the person I was in search of turned out to be an inposter, like one who had lately taken in a respectable lady—a Mrs Murray —who kept lodgers in the stair above his house, who went by the name of Douglas — “