DANNY'S BOY, EXETER, 1843.

 "A bill-sticker named Thos. Dadds, summoned Mr. H. O'Connell, soi disant son of the great agitator, for the non-payment of 10s. due to him for the exercise of his profession.

"Mr O'Connell, in Sept., 1841. had bills posted about the city, stating that he would deliver a lecture on the Drama, the Immortality of the Soul, and the State of the Country, all on the same evening!  and the price of admission was two shillings only! 

"Those, however, who put their trust in these posters were doomed to be disappointed.  Mr O'Connell did not appear on the evening fixed; and so the minds of the liberal and discerning public were left unenlightened on these important subjects, and Thomas Dadds, the bill-sticker, was not remunerated for fixing in conspicuous situations the aforesaid delusive placards.   Mr. O'Connell not appearing before the Bench, the case was deferred to Monday."

"MONDAY, -  Mr. H O'Connell now appeared to answer the complaint of the bill-sticker, and said that as he was under age when this debt was incurred, he was not answerable for it.  The bill-sticker must therefore apply to his father, the great liberator.

"He, however, was willing to pay 5s.  He was now about to deliver a lecture on Astronomy (at which he would be happy to see their worships).  He intended to pay the expenses this time, and he thanked God he had the means to do so.

"After some chaffering, this was agreed by Dadds, who stipulated, however that he should have (as we understand) a few dozen of his admission tickets over and above the 5s."

This is fun, because this young man is assuredly Henry Simpson O'Connell the soi disant, as The Times elegantly puts it, son of Daniel O'Connell,  the  great and famous Liberator of Ireland, by Ellen Courtenay, a clever lass from Cork, who claimed to have been raped and thereby inseminated of Henry by the fragrant, 40 year old, family-man and liberator, Daniel, in Dublin when she was only 15.  She, like Henry, subsequently, survived as an itinerant lecturer as well as being an actress, a writer and a poet.  Daniel denied fatherhood of Henry but the boy's physical appearance was said to have given the lie to The Great Liberator.

If, as seems probable, Henry was living in Exeter between 1841 and 1843 we would perhaps not have suspected it, were it not for Mr. Dadds the unpaid bill-sticker. 

A writer, Trina Wills, in 2022, supplied a truly fascinating paper, on-line, about Ellen Courtenay, (https://repository.canterbury.ac.uk/item/94z00/the-voices-of-ellen-courtenay-the-life-and-work-of-ellen-courtenay-as-helen-steinberg-poet-actress-appeal-memoirist-and-lecturer) who Ms. Wills discovered, did not, as the world imagined, die in 1836 but who secretly transmogrified to one 'Helene Steinberg' (with the accents!) and lived until 1864. 

Source: The Western Times, 20th May, 1843.