Not sure if they'll be the same as these, but I've scanned the etchings made for the
Illustrated London News and they're
available on Flickr.
Since my earlier posts, I've come to the conclusion the figure of 81 victims was most likely derived from the 78 named victims plus 3 children who were unclaimed at the time the coroner released the bodies for burial (all 3 appear in the burial registers as "unknown"). At least 1, if not 2, of those 3 children were very likely amongst the named 78, as not all had been identified by the inquest. The local newspapers never really settled on a precise figure, but the
Huddersfield Chronicle claimed there were exactly 80 victims when one of the last missing bodies was eventually recovered in the summer of 1852.
Going back to the foundling story, there are a few instances of people using the event for own purposes. For example, one local newspaper reported that the dead body of a baby had been found near the banks of the river several days after the flood. However, the evidence pointed towards it having died shortly after birth (rather than drowned) and it was believed one of the parents had placed it there to make it appear to be a victim of the flood. So, I could well believe that an illegitimate child born around the time of the flood might be passed off by their mother as being a flood foundling to gain local sympathy.
Gillum's initial post mentions a chest of drawers and this might possibly be borrowing from something which did happen on the night of the flood. One family fled their house in a hurry, accidentally leaving their youngest child behind. When the father realised, he turned back but was unable to re-enter the house by the door. However, he was able to force a window open and saw the child sat atop a chest of drawers which was floating around the room in the swirling flood water. He was able to pull the child to safety when the drawers floated near enough to the window.
In the Rev. S. Baring-Gould's "Penny Comequicks" book, it has an episode in which a baby in a crib is washed away by a flood. The infant survives as the family's cat had jumped on top and, legs akimbo, it managed to keep the crib upright by shifting its weight around. There are also claims that Baring-Gould himself rescued a teenage girl from a later flood at Horbury and fell in love with her. They married and (I believe) had 15 children!