The Adoption Coincidence

A Sunday coincidence from days gone by. This one concerns the English writer and artist Augustus J.C Hare.

In the 1830s, when he was just 14 months old, he was given up for adoption. In Hare's autobiography he relates the following story:

On the anniversary of my adoption, we all went to Mannheim and dined at the hotel where, seventeen years before, I, being fourteen months old, was given away to my aunt, who was also my godmother, to live with her forever as if I were her own child.

When we returned to the station in the evening on the platform was a poor woman crying bitterly, with a child in her arms.

She was asked if she was in great trouble. "Yes," she said.

"It is about my little child, who is only fourteen months old, and is going away from me forever in the train which is coming. It is going to be adopted by its aunt, who is also its godmother, and I shall never, never have anything to do with it any more."