No. 261.
Mr. Hoppin
to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
London, November 2, 1883. (Received November 16.)
Sir: Referring to my No. 647, of the 30th ultimo, I have the honor to acquaint you that a police inspector called at the legation yesterday and brought me information respecting O’Donnell, which corrects, to some extent, that previously supplied by the police authorities, and confirms, in some particulars, the statement of O’Donnell himself. As it also contains a few new facts, I thought it of sufficient importance to communicate by cable, and therefore sent you a cipher telegram, the translation of which is as follows. [See telegram of November 1, printed supra.]
The inspector said that this information was probably obtained from O’Donnell’s relatives in Ireland. You will observe a discrepancy between this statement and his own respecting his first visit to the United States. He said that this was when he was “four or six” years old, which, if his age is now forty-eight, must have been in 1839 or 1841. The police state that it was when he was nine years old, and was in the spring of 1846, making his age now to be forty-six. Whichever account be correct, it is evident that between his first arrival in the United States and his application for naturalization in 1876, he had lived at different times, for many years, in Ireland.
In addition to what I stated in the telegram, the police report that from 1867 or 1868, until the spring of 1871, he lived on the farm in Ireland with his father and mother, in an adjoining house to theirs, where he kept a huckster’s shop. He was married after his arrival in 1867 or 1868, in Ireland.
* * * * * * * *
[The paragraphs omitted relate to an inquiry made by an attorney in Mississippi, as to the supposed identity of the prisoner with another individual of the same name. This supposition proved unfounded.]
The police inspector whom I mentioned at the commencement of this [Page 475] dispatch promised me to cause inquiries to be made in Ireland as to the date and place of O’Donnell’s father’s naturalization in America, but I have very slight hope of obtaining any information there upon this subject.
I have, &c.,