Notebook “Social cases. 1869” (1869). III: Cuttings, February to November 1869

Newspaper cuttings collected by Karl Marx in the notebook “Social cases. 1869” (IISG, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Papers, P 3), as transcribed in MEGAdigital (MEGA² IV/19). The source of each cutting, as identified by the MEGA editors, is given in the notes; the handwritten dates added by Jenny Marx (daughter) are not reproduced.¹ Traducción al español

POOR-LAW MEDICAL OFFICERS’ ASSOCIATION.²

At a meeting of this valuable society, held last evening at Freemason’s-hall, Dr. Rogers in the chair, an elaborate report was presented by the council. It stated that the association had recently been doing its best to obtain parliamentary support to the objects it had in view, and that letters had been received from many distinguished members of parliament in consequence. Mr. Bright declared how glad he would be to assist in doing justice to the medical officers in any matter of which they had a right to complain; and Mr. Lowe wrote that, as representative of a constituency containing a large number of the medical profession, he should feel it to be his duty to watch carefully over their interests, so far as they were affected by legislation. Letters of like import had been received from Mr. Goschen M.P., Mr. Hughes, M.P., Mr. Torrens, M.P., Mr. C. Reed, M.P., Sir H. Hoare, M.P., Mr. W. E. Forster, M.P., Mr. Onslow, M.P., and dozens of other members of parliament.

The PRESIDENT delivered a lengthy address. He pointed out, as a natural result he had long prophesied, that the London ratepayers were so alarmed at the reckless and injudicious local expenditure to which they were subject, that they were rising in rebellion against Mr. Hardy’s act. Having reason to believe that the system of medical relief to the poor in Ireland was vastly superior to ours, he had obtained some valuable information from the chief clerk to the Irish commission. In 13 months after the Irish Charities Act came into operation dispensaries had been established, and were in working order all over, and even in the remotest districts of the island. Under the first year’s working of the act the total expenditure on the poor was 937,556l. After it had been in operation seven years the amount had diminished to 513,048l. Up to 1867 it had slowly risen again, doubtless owing to the depressed state of the country. Notwithstanding this, the figures for 1867 represented a diminution of 142,662l. upon the outlay for 1852. Medicines and appliances for 1867 cost 21,776l. The salaries of medical officers amounted to 72,353l. and the total was 118,117l. Deducting this from 794,894l., the amount expended for the relief of the poor during the year 1867 would show the proportionate amount which medical relief bore to the general local poor rate. Starting from the same date a return issued by the English Poor-law Beard showed that the total amount expended for the relief of the poor in 1852 was 4,897, 685l. From that period to 1867 there had been a nearly constant and steady increase of taxation under this head until in 1867 it had reached the enormous sum of 6,959,841l. or 6s. 6d. per head of population; in fact, it had increased to the extent of 2,062,155l. He had good reason for believing that if we had the returns to the present time still more damaging figures would come out. The amount of money expended for medical relief to the poor in England and Wales was 272,225l. In Ireland 118,000l. was expended for five and a half millions; in England 272,225l. was expended for a population of nearly four times the number. If, therefore, the English and Irish scales were assimilated, we should require the gross amount to be nearly 200,000l. more in order to secure for the English medical officer even the scanty measure of justice now accorded to the Irish medical profession in the treatment of the sick. Dr. Rogers, after entering into a vast array of statistics, drew the following conclusions: Now what should be the remedy for this state of things? Having so excellent a poor law medical service in the sister island, I would urge that it should be made the basis of any alteration in England and Wales. Above all things, I must press that all medicines and appliances should be provided at the public expense, not grudgingly, but at the discretion of the medical officer, subject of course to the supervision of persons competent to judge his requirements; and that dispensaries should be established in all fitting localities, and, in populous places, dispensers appointed. Should this be done, it would involve a probable annual outlay of, say, in round numbers, 500,000l. of which some 86,000l. would have to be expended in medicines and medical appliances, i.e., arguing from the Irish figures; leaving 414,000l. available for the salaries of medical officers, dispensers, and for contingencies. The question now arises, from what sources should this sum be raised? I utterly despair of every inducing the general body of guardians throughout the country to act justly, or even with an intelligent regard, to the public interest in this matter—(cheers)—and as the sickness of the poor should be a matter of national concern, I would throw the whole of the salaries of the officers—instead of, as at present, the half of them—upon the consolidated fund, compelling boards of guardians to find medicines. (Cheers.)

The report was unanimously passed, and several resolutions were adopted. The chief amongst them complained of the inadequate and unfair salaries of Poor-law medical officers; insisted that permanence of appointment was essential to the due and independent discharge of the duties of Poor-law medical officers, and that they should be considered entitled to superannuation allowance in common with the members of the civil service. A petition embodying these opinions was agreed upon for presentation to the House of Commons. The various speakers were earnest in their praise of the efforts of the association in the cause of Poor-law Medical Reform.

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THE ALLEGED DEATH FROM STARVATION IN THE ISLE OF DOGS.³

Yesterday afternoon, at the ordinary meeting of the Popular Board of Guardians, the clerk read a report which appeared in several of the morning journals of that day, of an inquest held by Mr. Humphreys, at the Folly House Tavern. Isle of Dogs, as to the death of Catherine Spencer, aged 34. The jury returned a verdict that the cause of death was “exhaustion, privation, and want of food.” The Rev. Mr. Carpenter, whose name was mentioned at the inquest, attended the meeting of the board, and stated that he had made very careful inquiries, and was convinced there was no truth whatever in the statement that the woman died from starvation. Her husband, he found, had had a quantity or work at intervals during the past month, and had actually received a sum of 6s. 6d. for wages the very day before the woman died. On the evening of that day deceased was in the nearest public-house, the Manchester Arms, drinking for a long time, and, as he was informed, was quite intoxicated. The man who passed as her husband—for they were not married—had worked at Millwall Docks, also for Mr. Wise, and had had other casual employment. Mr. Delaney, the relieving officer for the south district, then made a long statement, fully bearing out the contradiction given above to the evidence before the coroner, and the facts were further confirmed by neighbours of the deceased woman, who were called as witnesses. Mr. E. H. Currie made some strong observations on the manner in which the coroner ordered and conducted some of his inquiries, and said it was due to the credit of the board that some measures should be adopted for bringing the evidence in the case now before them under the notice of the proper authorities. He moved that the clerk be instructed to transmit copies of the evidence now taken and the published report to the coroner, the Poor-Law Board, and the Home Secretary. The motion was seconded by Mr. Ravenhill, and supported by Mr. Blott, who remarked that all who were acquainted with the liberal character of that board would be slow to believe that anyone would be likely to die of starvation in their district. The motion was put from the chair, and carried unanimously.

BURYING AN EMPTY COFFIN.—⁴

One of those strange freaks of circumstances by which truth vindicates its pre-eminence in strangeness over fiction occurred within the last few days at Farnham workhouse. In the obituary of the 500th issue of this paper, the death of Mary Pitts was recorded as having taken place at Farnham workhouse. Arrangements were made for her burial. The undertaker had provided a special coffin for deceased, owing to the cramped position in which life had left her. The rule of the house is this:—When an inmate of the sick ward dies, the body, after being properly attended to by the nurse, is removed in a shell from the sick ward to the dead house. It appears that this was done in the case of Mary Pitts. When the undertaker brought this “special coffin” home, he placed it in the dead-house in the usual way. One day last week somebody was sent by somebody else to screw down the coffin lid. Shell and coffin lay side by side, and both with their lids on, and screws in the coffin lid just as the undertaker had left it. Without heed or care the screws were turned down by this irresponsible somebody, and on Friday the coffin brought out with all due solemnity, and, placed on Bent-all’s shillibeer-carriage, was conveyed to Aldershot cemetery. Sundry remarks were jocularly passed by the bearers upon the lightness of the coffin, but irresponsible somebody took no heed. The burial service of the church of England was read and in “sure and certain hope of a joyful resurrection” the coffin was deposited in the grave and filled in. The family who were to have followed were misled by irresponsible somebody, and arrived about an hour after the service was ended. So matters stood, until another inmate of the workhouse died on Friday, the 22nd, and the shell was again required. Somebody was sent for it, and on his removing the lid, he exclaimed in utter amazement, “Good God! Here’s the woman we buried last Saturday!” The master was at once informed of the fact, the news soon flew, some of the guardians assembled, naturally indignant at the gross neglect of duty manifested by everybody concerned. On Monday the remains of the unfortunate woman were conveyed to Aldershot cemetery, and interred. On Wednesday a special meeting of the guardians was held in the board-room, and a report of the circumstance forwarded to the Poor-law Board. There the matter rests for the present, but whatever action may be taken, we may perhaps be allowed to suggest that above the spot where the empty coffin lies a memorial stone should be erected to mark forever the detestation and abhorrence which sensible men feel at the wretchedly-irresponsible system under which such things are possible. Let the stone read:—In memory of duties deputed, duties neglected, and duties unperformed. January 16th, 1869.—Surrey and Hants News and Guildford Times.

METROPOLITAN PAUPERISM.⁵

The statistical statements of the Poor-law Board furnishes the Returns of Pauperism in the Metropolis for the first week of February, 1868, compared with the numbers in the corresponding period of 1869.

In the West District there are the parishes and unions of Kensington, Fulham, Paddington, Chelsea; St. George, Hanover-square; St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster. In the first week of February in the present year there were 21,862 paupers, as against 21,746 last year.

The North District contains the unions and parishes of St. Marylebene, Hampstead, St. Pancras, Islington, and Hackney. Here the paupers numbered 30,605; last year they were 29,785.

The Central District comprises St. Giles and St. George, Bloomsbury, Strand, Holborn, Clerkenwell, St. Luke’s East London, West London, and the City. Instead of an increase, as shown in the two former districts, there is here a decided decrease. This year there were 25,750.

In the East District there are Shoreditch, Bethnal-green, Whitechapel, St. George-in-the-East, Stepney, Mile-end Old town, and Poplar. Here also there was a large diminution of pauperism—35,028 this year against 40,897 in February last.

The South District includes St. Saviour’s, Southwark; St. Olaveʼs, Bermondsey; St. George’s Southwark; Newington, Lambeth, Wandsworth, and Clapham, Camberwell, RotherLithe, Greenwich, Woolwich, and Lewisham. Here the decrease is very slight. This year there are 46,054 paupers, while last year there were 46,251.

The following comparative statement is annexed to the return:

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DISTRESS IN ST. PHILIP’S DISTRICT, KENNINGTON-ROAD.⁶

TO THE EDITOR.

SIR,—Although the winter has hitherto not been so severe as usual, yet the poverty and distress amongst us is so great that I ask to trespass on a brief space in your columns. In populations of upwards of 7000 there are at this time about 100 families entirely, and many others more difficult to estimate, more or less out of work. I leave the facts to tell their own tale—they are but a sample from those which are continually brought to me.

1. Man, wife, five children. Has had no work for six weeks; children in rage; literally nothing in their room.

2. Man, wife, four children. Wife recently confined; hard-working woman; seeking to support the family by mangling since husband has been out of work. Mangle has been seized for rent.

3. Man, wife, six children. Surgical instrument maker; wholly incapacitated from following his employment by disease.

4. Man, wife, daughter. Man, paralysed; wife, infirm; and daughter in bad health. Man once kept a respectable inn.

5. Blind widow and two children. Has just lost a son, aged 19, in consumption.

6. Man, wife, and wife’s mother. The latter bedridden. Man, cabdriver, entirely laid by, through accident and disease.

I write from a list of thirty such cases now before me. Need I recall the fact that, besides distress arising from want of work, there must be many cases of infirmity which need at this time more than ordinary help? To hope to alleviate this distress from the locality would be futile when more than two-thirds of the population is living from hand to mouth. I look, of necessity, for help from without, and I am confident that some who have it in their power will not suffer me to be a continual witness of misery which I am unable to relieve.—I am, yours truly,

ALLEN T. EDWARDS, Vicar of St. Philip’s, Lambeth. 39, Upper Kennington-lane, S. E., Jan. 18.

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HORRIBLE DISCOVERY OF TWO DEAD BODIES.⁷

On Wednesday, an inquest was held at Sudbury, on the bodies of Mary Ready, aged seventy, and of her daughter, Mary Ann Ready, aged thirty-four. It appears from the report of the Suffolk and Essex Free Press, that the deceased women lived at No. 56, Cross-street, Sudbury, and that they were discovered dead in their residence on Tuesday morning. It seems that a young man named William Stevens, who it was understood was paying his addresses to the younger deceased, was an occasional lodger in the house, but had not been in the town for some time. The mother and daughter were known to be eccentric, and, according to the medical testimony, the younger woman was not of sound mind. Owing to want of work, as staymakers and milliners, they had been in a state of great poverty for a considerable period, but would not apply to the parish for relief. Nothing had been seen of the mother for some three weeks or a month past, and very little of the daughter. They were persons who did not go out very much. The last that is known of the existence of either, and that only as a matter of presumption, is that last Monday evening, the cottage door having been mischievously broken open by one of the many boys who were at play in the street, it was shut by someone inside, who was not seen. Between nine and ten o’clock on Tuesday morning the attention of a policeman was called to the cottage by seeing a crowd of people against it, and he was told that there was a woman lying inside the house naked. He entered the cottage and found the bodies of the two deceased women, one in a lower apartment, the other in an upper room of the cottage. The place was in a wretched and dilapidated condition, destitute of furniture and of all traces of food or fuel. The body of the mother presented the appearance of a skeleton merely covered with skin. It lay naked on the floor of the upper room, with a sort of coverlid thrown over it, and had apparently been “laid out” after death. It seemed that the idle boys of the town were in the habit of annoying the deceased women, and in addition to breaking open the door as described had broken several squares of glass in the cottage. The postman had delivered a letter at the house on Friday morning, and it was taken in by the younger woman, who partly opened the door for the purpose. Mr. Mason, surgeon, deposed that there were no marks of violence on the bodies, that they were very emaciated, that the elder female had probably been dead eight or ten days and the younger one from twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and that death appeared to have resulted from starvation. The inquest was adjourned to enable the post mortem examination of the bodies to be made.

Amongst the letters found in the cottage was the following suggestive one, seeming to show that the mother must have been dead a considerable time longer than the medical man judged:—

“March 2, 1869. 1, Little Coram-street, Russell-square, London.

My dear,—I write these few lines to you to let you know I arrived safe after my long walk. God was very merciful, for I met with a bit of bread as soon as I got to Halstead, and has continued so until I reached London, but my shoes are off my feet entirely. My cousin complains of the hardness of the times, so that I cannot be here, I am afraid, and where I shall go, and what to do without money God only knows. Unless you send me some assistance in some way I must be in the streets of London. Write by return of post, and let me know how you get on with the funeral of your mother, as I am anxious to know. I sincerely hope you did not get into any trouble through such neglect. I prayed for you all the way on my perilous journey for your escape and welfare. I cannot ascertain any information as to where Bournhenger is, but London is in a dreadful starving state. I hope your aunt assisted you all she could in the sad case, and not offended with you in your sad condition. If you have any money to send for an order make it payable at Grenville-street, near Coram-street, Russell-square, London, W. C. If you send stamps that will do, as I want to try an advertisement in the Country Chronicle immediately, or I do not know what will become of me. I do feel uneasy until I hear from you. Yours affectionate,

WILLIAM STEVENS.”

The scripture enjoins us to let our light shine before men, that may emulate our good deeds, but we cannot call to mind any passage that sanctions an opposite course as regards evil actions. Perhaps, however, those highly “respectable” and doubtless pious vestrymen entrusted with the responsibility of preventing the poor being plundered by rascals who purposely and systematically use short measures and light weights during six days of the week, and on the seventh invoke mercy for themselves as miserable sinners—perhaps they have some scripture authority for concealing the misdeeds of such men under a bushel.⁸

In the following passage, extracted from a letter written to a local newspaper by Mr. T. Middleton, foreman of the inspectors of weights and measures for the large parish of St. Pancras, London, will be found a key to the above observations. He says:—

“The inspectors of balances, weights, and measures think the only way of lessening the numerous cases of deficient weights and measures in the parish are by giving publicity to those persons on whom the fines are levied. We think the parish authorities ought to take the matter in hand and be more strict. We sometimes feel sorry that we cannot inflict a heavier fine than we are allowed to do by law, for, in many instances, the fines are thought nothing of, and people go on in a careless manner, sooner paying the fine than paying the scale-makers. A famous tea merchant, on our last round, whom we had occasion to fine (he having a 21b. weight 6oz. deficient, and a 7lb. weight 4oz. deficient), said he would sooner pay any amount than have his name published. The number of persons fined each time varies from ten to sixteen, which, added up at the end of the year, would show how much cheating (for we cannot call it anything else) is going on only in the two wards we visit.”

But, notwithstanding it is well known that publicity is the only sure preventative of roguery behind the counter, the authorities whose duty it is to suppress such pernicious rascality continue to guard with the utmost secrecy the list containing the names of tradesmen fined for using short weights and measures. Rarely, indeed, is it that newspaper reporters can obtain a sight of these black lists, for vestrymen take particular care to keep them to themselves. Petty larceny, such as is mentioned in Mr. Middleton’s report, is perpetrated principally upon the very poorer orders, just the class of persons that feel it most severely. Doubtless many vestrymen—themselves regular church and chapel goers, highly “respectable” individuals in the opinion of their neighbours—place putty under their scales, and use false bottoms to their measures. Hence, perhaps, the distaste they entertain to publishing lists that probably frequently contain their own names. In all likelihood, burglars, coiners, thieves, and pickpockets entertain a strong aversion to having their names and deeds known to the world, but, notwithstanding this natural antipathy to publicity, justice requires that their misdeeds should be as well-known as possible.

The systematic robbery of the poor is one of the heaviest of delinquencies against the law of God, and a serious and mischievous breach of that of man. Yet the poor are plundered with comparative impunity, simply because those who could put a stop to such knavery belong to the same class as the knaves. One of the ugliest blots upon the administration of English justice is that which admits of people sitting, as it were, in judgment on themselves. As we find game preserving squires filling the bench when poaching cases are under adjudication, employers of labour in their magisterial capacity deciding disputes between workmen and masters, so do we have tradesmen vested with the power of screening themselves and their roguish brethren from the publicity that ought to follow every conviction of robbery of the poor.

LAMBETH INTERIORS.⁹

At the usual fortnightly meeting of the Lambeth vestry, yesterday evening, a report was read from the General Purposes Committee respecting the existence of pigsties, dustbins, and other nuisances in certain parts of the parish. The committee had visited several of the poorer streets and courts in the parish, and had found them to be on the whole not in a very uncleanly condition. Such repairs and improvements as were in the power of the vestry to order had been effected, and the medical officer had reported that in a very poor district containing 2,000 inhabitants there had not been for three months a single case of small-pox, only eight of scarlet fever, two of measles, and one or two of typhoid fever. The committee had found overcrowding to prevail, and a great reluctance on the part of the owners of property to build cesspools, pave courts, and execute other necessary repairs. The report concluded by recommending that the 100th section of the Metropolis Management Amendment Act be put into operation to compel owners of property to drain and pave the courts and passages, and, in default, that the vestry proceed to execute the works, and to recover the cost.

Mr. MITCHELL, looking at the length and importance of the report, moved that it be printed and circulated preparatory to its full discussion.

This motion gave rise to an animated discussion, in the course of which, and in answer to questions from Mr. GILES,

The MEDICAL OFFICER gave his opinion that contagious disease was more likely to spread in model lodging houses than in the ordinary small four-roomed houses. He had not found the block known as the Prince of Wales’s lodging houses particularly cleanly.

Mr. GILES complained of the animadversions of the public press respecting parochial matters, and proceeded to call attention to an appeal from the Rev. R. Gregory for “the unemployed 10,000 poor of Lambeth.” He reminded the meeting that Mr. Gregory’s church was only a district church, situated opposite the workhouse, in which the vestry was spending 1,350l. a week on the poor. Mr. Giles complained also of another appeal from the Rev. Mr. Edwards on behalf of 7,000 of the unemployed. Mr. Giles considered the statements contained in these appeals to be much exaggerated.

The amendment was then put, and decided in the negative. On the original motion for the adoption of the report,

Mr. HEATON moved another amendment, to the effect that all that was necessary to secure a good sanitary condition of the parish was greater vigilance on the part of the inspectors of nuisances, and a vigorous prosecution of offenders. The serving of notices upon the owners of property he looked upon as being quite useless. He said that a clause to the same effect as his amendment had originally stood in the report of the General Purposes Committee. His object was merely to have the clause replaced.

Mr. R. TAYLOR, jun., objected to the report. The General Purposes Committee had appointed a sub-committee of four to inspect a district, complaints of the sanitary state of which had been made in the newspapers by “A District Visitor” (Miss Nicholls). The letters of the “District Visitor” complained of the remissness of the medical officer, and yet that gentleman was made a member of the sub-committee. He thought that in common fairness the “District Visitor” should also have accompanied the inspectors. He moved that the report be referred back to the committee for reconsideration, and also that properly defined maps should be prepared of those portions of the parish that required special sanitary supervision.

Mr. FOWLER was of opinion that there was much in the condition of the parish that required reform, and that heavy charges of neglect must rest somewhere. Overcrowding was a general complaint in the parish. Over that the parish had no control, but it was their duty to secure for those poor crowded people the best possible sanitary condition of their tenements. Under those circumstances, he felt bound to support Mr. Heaton’s amendment.

Mr. JERVIS observed that a good many of the defects discovered by the inspecting committee had been created by the destructive tendencies of the tenants themselves. He would suggest public cast-iron dustbins. (A laugh.)

Mr. ACKERMAN opposed Mr. Heaton’s amendment on the ground that it reflected on the vigilance of the officers of the vestry.

Mr. STIFF made an explanation respecting a house of his which had been reported on by the General Purposes Committee. The house was situated in “Salamanca” (a district close to the church), and was occupied by a poor woman who had paid him no rent for the last two years. Her husband was in the workhouse hospital, and she had to support her family out of her own earnings. He (Mr. Stiff) had made various attempts to get her out, but without success. He knew the house to be in a most filthy state, but he would not touch it until he got rid of this tenant. He employed her son, and last Saturday night he refused the boy his wages unless he brought him the key. He also had paid two weeks rent for the woman elsewhere, but still she had not stirred. Until she left, he should resist every attempt to make him repair or cleanse the house.

Mr. GODDARD and Mr. HARDY severally testified to the wretched sanitary condition of the parish.

Mr. JAMES TAYLOR contended that they must have more extensive legal powers, and more inspection, if they wished to have the sanitary condition of the parish what it ought to be. The parish of Lambeth contained 4,015 acres. There were 90 miles of roadway, 27,000 houses, and 180,000 inhabitants. He asked were three inspectors sufficient to cover such an extent of ground?

The report, with Mr. Heaton’s amendment, was then put, and carried by a majority of two, the numbers being 24 to 22.

The vestry adjourned to that day fortnight.

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OUR criticism of the expenditure proposed under Mr. HARDY’S Act will be brought to an end with a review of the new buildings proposed to be erected in the Northern and Eastern Districts. The arrangements for the sick in the Marylebone Workhouse are undoubtedly of superior quality, and the infirmary is honourably distinguished by a staff of paid nurses which has been in existence many years. Nevertheless the number of infirm and bedridden has of late so much increased that extra accommodation has been provided. The block of wards recently erected contains 240 females, and cost about 7,000l. A second block for 100 patients is in course of erection, at an expense of 4,200l. for the building; and if the present system of indoor relief be continued, 150 more beds will soon be required, for which provision has been made. We may put down the probable expenditure at 20,000l. for the 500 beds.¹⁰

The expenditure in St. Pancras has been so freely canvassed, that we state it without comment:

At the passing of Mr. HARDY’S Act, the Islington guardians were pledged to build a new workhouse, at a probable cost of 40,000l., but additional arrangements being made for a separate infirmary, the expense of building is increased to 63,300l., and by the time it is fitted and furnished the probable cost will be 100,000l. There will be additional accommodation for at least 1,000 persons, and, as the staff will be large and complete, the annual expense will not be less than 18l. per head, or 18,000l. The guardians have lately spent a considerable sum upon their schools.

The guardians of Hackney have fitted up nearly the whole of the existing workhouse as a most comfortable and sufficient asylum and infirmary, and they are about to build new wards for 350 able-bodied males and females. The building is contracted for at the price of 8,500l., and by the time fixtures and furniture, &c., are complete, the probable expenditure will be 11,000l. or 12,000l.

In the East District, the guardians of Shoreditch have been called upon to erect a separate infirmary, and to enlarge their schools. This case is the more remarkable, as when asked to put the cost of those various buildings upon the common poor fund, Mr. HARDY objected on the ground that it would be unfair to make those districts pay which had already provided sufficient accommodation, and he quoted the case of Shoreditch, which had recently expended more than 60,000l. in the erection of a new workhouse, in which the accommodation for the sick was ample and sufficient. Nevertheless the guardians, under pressure of the Poor-law Board, have taken steps to erect a new hospital for 300 patients at a cost of 40,000l., and are contemplating the enlargement of their schools at Brentwood at a cost of 18,000l. The proposal is the more unreasonable as nearly 200 imbeciles will be removed from the workhouse when the new asylums are complete, by which space will easily be provided for nearly an equal number of infirm and sick. The extra annual expenditure, if this scheme be carried out, cannot be less than 8,000l.

The guardians of Bethnal-green, on being requested to consider the question of a separate infirmary, have positively declined to do so, on the ground that they would be unable to raise the money from the struggling and impoverished ratepayers; but if compelled to carry out the wishes of the Poor-law Board, as expressed in their letter, they would have to provide a hospital on a new site for at least 300 patients, sickness in Bethnal-green forming the most prominent cause of pauperism. The probable cost of such an institution would be 40,000l. and its charge not less than 6,000l. per annum.

The guardians of Whitechapel have purchased the site for a new workhouse for able-bodied inmates at a cost of 5,000l., and they estimate the cost of buildings at an equal sum. Such an estimate seems extremely low, and we believe that 20,000l. is more likely to be the ultimate amount.

In St. George’s-in-the-East the guardians have purchased a piece of land at a cost of 7,000l., and they contemplate the erection of a now infirmary. They are also making great improvements in their present building. They will probably require to provide for 300 patients and it is observed that any number of occupants can be found as the labourer is remitted to the workhouse for the rest of life very early. Upon the slightest failure of health his place in the labour market is at once occupied by a strong and abler immigrant from the country. Not long ago a pauper died at the advanced age of 106, who had been 70 years a pauper, 30 of which had been passed in the workhouse. We may estimate the probable expenditure at 50,000l. Mile-end will not require to spend a very large sum in altering the workhouse so as to provide more suitably than at present for the sick and infirm. Probably 2,000l. will suffice.

The Stepney and Poplar Asylum will accommodate 600 patients, and is estimated to cost 68,000l. At 20l. per head the annual outlay will be 12,000l. per annum. The Forest-gate School District has been formed to take the children of Hackney, Poplar, and Whitechapel. The present buildings will be greatly enlarged, at a probable cost of 10,000l. at a very low estimate. The guardians of Poplar have also agreed to build a new workhouse for the able-bodied class, which is estimated to cost 40,000l., and as it will contain 1,000 inmates, will cost for officers and maintenance not less than 10,000l. a year.

To conclude this list, we have yet to mention that the South Metropolitan Schools are to be enlarged. The contracts for the work vary from 9,000l. to 28,000l., and may probably be taken at 20,000l. The managers of the Central London Schools are about to erect new reception wards at the possible cost of 2,000l. Summing up the items mentioned above, we have the following result:

In making the foregoing estimate we wish to guard ourselves from the imputation of exaggeration. We are aware that many of the items are conjectural, and that those which have to a certain extent been settled may be considerably reduced in the hands of the Poor-law Board, since we are assured that Mr. GOSCHEN is most desirous of carrying out the economical views of the present Government. We are convinced, however, that our estimate, particularly as to the annual expenditure, is much below the actual probability, and even if the contrary, enough has been stated to justify a reconsideration of the whole question. The total accommodation noticed is as follows:

which is increasing the indoor accommodation as near as possible 50 per cent and that for the most costly classes. The real question to be determined is whether it is better to provide an indefinite and ever-increasing amount of in-door accommodation for the aged, infirm, and chronic sick, or to relieve them at home, where the ties of kindred may be preserved, independence fostered, and industry to the full capacity of each may be pursued. This question was determined by the Poor-law Commissioners 30 years ago in favour of the latter plan, leaving the workhouse to the able-bodied classes; and it is important that Parliament should consider twice before the recommendations of that eminent Commission shall be so completely set aside as they are by the costly institutions provided under Mr. HARDY’S Poor Act.

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THERE is something almost sensational in Mr. BRUCE’S announcement that our pauperism has increased 45 per cent in the last three years. If every hundred thousand paupers in 1866 have become a hundred and forty-five thousand in 1869, we must either check the rate of pauper increase or succumb to the pauper’s fate. Given the number of paupers and the total number and rate of increase of the population, and it would be easy to name the date at which, should the same rate of pauper increase be continued, we must necessarily all have become paupers. We may fairly remember that the period during which this increase has taken place is just the period of the greatest and longest commercial depression which this generation has experienced. Three years ago the great collapse of credit took place, and that collapse followed on a period of inflation. In 1865 all went merry as a marriage bell; trade was brisk, credit good, prospects cheering, and pauperism was probably at its minimum, the forty-five per cent increase is, therefore, the full effect of a disastrous time; it is an increase of fifteen per cent per annum through three years of depression. But everybody agrees that we have weathered the worst of the crisis, and that through the winter of our discontent is not yet made glorious summer, still we are emerging from it into, at least, the fitful weather of reviving spring. The pauper increase has probably reached its term, and we may hope, not only for a diminishing rate of increase, but even for absolute decrease. This is one reassuring consideration. The other is, that the whole administration of the Poor Law is marked out for reconstruction. The increase of pauperism is not wholly due to diminished employment. Mr. BRUCE believes, with Lord OVERSTONE and some other noble lords, that the bad administration of the Poor Law is really at the bottom of the evil. We spread pauperism by ill-directed efforts to check it. Our workhouse are schools of idleness, and our out-door relief, by its utter want of real discrimination, increases the evil it seeks to remedy. The very growth of pauperism proves that our old system of dealing with it has broken down, but the fact which proves the old system to be effete prepares the way for a new one. Pauperism is no longer an evil to be palliated, it has become one to be played with—but a disease to be cured; and there is, at any rate, some reason to hope that an increase of forty-five per cent in the last three years may lead to such legislative and social efforts as will ensure a corresponding diminution in the next three years.¹¹

MARYLEBONE.¹²

DESTITUTION AND DESPERATION.—On Tuesday, Hannah Lee, aged 37, of 53, Hangton–street, Harrow-road, needlewoman, and the widow of a postman who died five years ago, was charged with attempting to commit suicide; also with attempting to deprive her child, Albert Lee, aged five and a half years, of its life, by administering laudanum to it. The landlady of the prisoner went to the room of the latter and found the door locked. Something was supposed to be wrong, and it was forced open. She then found the prisoner standing in the room, looking very wild and haggard. On being spoken to she fell, apparently stupefied. After she had been shaken and questioned she said she had taken laudanum. The witness saw the child with its face buried in the pillow, and asked her what was the matter with it. She replied he had had the draught as well. The witness, who saw two empty bottles on the able, ran out of the house and called a constable. The prisoner, on coming to himself, said it was hard to starve and see her child asking for bread which she could not give him. The witness told her that she ought to have let her know her state, and she would have had what she required. In reply to Mr. D’Eyncourt, witness said the prisoner was a hard-working, sober, and prudent woman. She was very fond of her child, and it surprised witness that she had attempted to take its life. Dr. Braythwaite Rogers said he was called in to see prisoner and her child, and found them both suffering from the poisonous effects of laudanum. He once administered what was requisite. In reply to questions, she told him distress and privation had driven her to commit the crime. She said her boy asked her that morning for breakfast, and she had none to give him. He cried, and having the poison, she gave him some and took some herself. She further said that she had bought the laudanum in small quantities at a time, and had kept it by her for more than two months. She had struggled “hard, very hard,” for employment, but could not succeed in getting any. The child vomited a good deal while he was in the room. She added that her husband had died very poor, and she had since got her living for herself and child by needlework and caring. There was not a particle of food or fire in the place. Mr. D’Eyncourt said it was a distressing case; but he must send her for trial for the attempt upon the life of her child. Prisoner begged not to be sent for trial. She only wanted work to maintain herself and her child. She did not wish for charity, but to maintain them both by her labour. The prisoner was committed to Newgate for trial.

BABY FARMING AT BOW.—¹³

An investigation was held by Mr. Richards, on Thursday night, at the Lord Campbell tavern, Campbell-road, Bow, respecting the death of Frederick Wood, aged 2 years and 3 months. The proceedings attracted considerable interest in the neighbourhood, for it was known that out of 11 children that had resided at the baby farm 5 had died. Miss Annie Wood, 4, Nilein’s-street, Hexton, said that she was 23 years of age. She was the daughter of a shopkeeper. The deceased was a sickly child, and ten months ago witness took it to Mrs. Caroline Savill, of 24, Swayton-road, Bow. She paid her 4s. 6d. per week to take care of it. She thought it was thoroughly attended to, but she had not seen it for five weeks. Caroline Savill, 24, Swayton-road, Bow, said that she was the wife of an “agricultural manufacturer’s porter” in the City. The deceased had been with her ten months. She put it to bed at 9 o’clock on Saturday night and at half-past 8 o’clock on Sunday morning it was dead. When she was taking the deceased up to bed last October, she slipped on the stairs and fell upon the child. She was quite certain she was sober. It was a pair of old boots that caused the accident. She had eleven babies to keep at Bow. The pay ceases when a child dies. Mr. Edwards—Is your house a baby farm? Witness—I must leave that to the generosity of the jury. A Juror—The deceased was lying in an egg box with a little straw for a bed. Witness—The legs were drawn up. A Juror—The egg box was a short one and was sixteen inches wide. The child could not turn in it. By a Juror—Witness never tied the child’s legs together. She never discovered that the child’s thigh was broken until the morning she fell upon it. He cried, but she put him to bed. He fell upon the edge of the stairs, and her weight was upon him. She sent for a doctor next day.

INFANTICIDE IN LONDON.—¹⁴

Last evening Dr. Lankester, the coroner for Central Middlesex, delivered a lecture on this subject to a large audience, in the Free-mason’s-hall, over which Mr. Charles Reed, M.P., presided, in the absence of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was detained in the House of Lords by the debate on the Life Peerages Bill. Dr. Lankester, after a scriptural and historical retrospect, proceeded to deal with the question as it addressed itself to the Christian world, and bore upon the wellbeing of society in modern times. Infanticide he defined to be the destruction or murder of a new-born child, but under another name the law also took cognizance of the destruction of a child before-it was born. He proposed to deal with the former of those crimes, and to draw upon his own experience for his facts, thus following in the footsteps of the late Mr. Wakley, who, like himself, had been wrongly accused of exaggeration while treating of this matter. In 1863 there were 55 cases of infanticide in his district; in 1864, 56; in 1865, 61; in 1866, 75; in 1867, 53; and in 1868, 52; but in too many instances he had discovered a tendency to return open verdicts of found dead or “still-born.” According to the judicial statistics of the Home-office the ratio of the crime for the whole of England was 1 in 170,000 of the population, and in Middlesex 1 in 20,000, while for the central and western districts it was 1 in 12,000, confirming him in the opinion that the crime was mainly confined to the domestic servants of the West-end. Indeed, on an average of five years the return for Clerkenwell was 1 in 30,000; St. Pancras, 1 in 20,000; Marylebone, 1 in 10,000; Paddington, 1 in 8,000; and Islington, 1 in 6,000. Having shown that the mother was generally alone in the murder and disposal of her child, Dr. Lankester went on to assert that the verdicts returned afforded no indication of the actual number of cases. He believed Mr. Wakley was right in fixing it at 300 a year, and as the murderess was generally twenty years of age, and seldom repeated her crime, taking the average life of women at 60, it followed that there were 12,000 women living who had committed the offence. He next glanced at the deaths occasioned amongst mothers and the effects of “baby farming,” observing that half the children upon whom he held inquests were illegitimate, and that from 40 to 80 per cent. of children admitted into foundling hospitals die within the first year, and concluded by stating his cure for the evil, which was to be worked through the pulpit, an alteration of the bastardy laws, as not more than one in 70 of the fathers contributed to the support of the child, the substitution of other than the capital punishment for the crime, a certified registration of births, as in Ireland and Scotland, and of still-born, as on the continent, and the enactment of punishments for the concealment of pregnancy.

THE VAGARIES OF THE “GREAT UNPAID.”¹⁵

“Justices’ justice” is certainly a riddle which cannot be solved—a puzzle that cannot be fathomed. In short the ways of the “great unpaid are incomprehensible—inexplicable”. Their vagaries are not only ridiculous, but mischievous; and every day brings forth fresh evidence of how they render the sacred name of justice a by-word for scorn and derision. In further proof of this being the case, we would draw our readers’ attention to two cases that recently came under the jurisdiction of magisterial benches at South Shields and at Leeds, as showing what scandalous severity is displayed in one instance, and what disgraceful leniency in the other.

A few days ago, one William Spencer Jones, lessee of the Jarrow Theatre, was summoned for having assaulted Mary Montague, an actress in his employment. The young lady having been asked to play a certain part, declined on the ground that it was not in the line for which she was engaged. The rest of the story is thus told in the report of the proceedings before the South Shields justices by the local paper:—

“On Miss Montague refusing to take the part, Mrs. Jones seized her by the hair, and dragged her across the stage to where the defendant was, and they then both endeavoured to throw her down some stairs. Mrs. Jones, failing in that, caught complainant in her arms, and tossed her to Jones, saying, ‘Give it to her!’ whereupon Jones swung his arms round her, and getting her head in his left arm, commenced to batter her face with his fist. He struck her several blows under the chin, and knocked seven of her teeth out. She thought Jones was going to kill her, and ‘she gave herself to God,” saying, ‘Lord take my soul!’ When defendant relaxed his hold of her, her jaws were locked, and it took her two hands before she could open her mouth, and when she did so several teeth fell out.”

Here was a most violent and barbarous assault perpetrated on a helpless young woman, by an infuriated virago and a most ruffianly fellow. They kicked her, they cuffed her, they beat her brutally and knocked seven teeth out of her mouth! We have seldom read of a more fiendish, of a more aggravated or dastardly assault. Three months’ imprisonment, with hard labour, as a sentence, would scarcely have met the requirements of justice. Even the magistrates themselves considered the case “a very bad one,” but the sentence they passed was certainly not in accord with the opinion given from the bench. They imposed a fine of five pounds on the cowardly assailant, and generously ordained that the complainant should have half the fine! The woman Tones appears to have got off free. Poor Miss Montague gets fifty shillings as compensation for the loss of seven teeth, and as a recompense for being pummelled within an inch of her life. Of course, the poor girl’s professional prospects are materially injured, if not quite ruined, by the consequences of Mr. and Mrs. Jones’s brutal violence. But the bench does not seem to have taken that part into consideration; and, therefore, any theatrical lessee who is desirous of thrashing a young actress and disfiguring her for life can do so for the paltry consideration of a five pound note! But the key to the leniency of these South Shields Shallows is, we suspect, to be found in the following little piece of information contained in the newspaper report. It says, “The defendant has property in the Tyne Dock.” Of course, Mr. Jones being a man of means, lessee of a theatre, and proprietor of stock in a local dock, found favour in the eyes of local magistrates; and, although the case was pronounced a very bad one, he got off for about the same amount as would be levied upon a costermonger convicted of ill-treating his donkey.

But if the South Shields justices have been guilty of most culpable leniency, surely the same indictment cannot be laid to the charge of the Leeds magistracy, as the following extract from the Leeds Mercury shows:—

“At the West Riding petty sessions, held at Leeds, yesterday, a lad named William Barlow, sixteen years of age, was sent for fourteen days to goal for playing at pitch and toss at Allerton Bywater on Friday last. The sitting magistrates were Sir A. Fairbairn, Mr. Darnton Lupton, and Mr. W. Hey.”

Poor Billy Barlow! He has assuredly fallen upon hard times, and seems to have gotten within the fangs of very hard men! We wonder if any of the “worthy magistrates” themselves ever indulge in a rubber of whist, or such like diversion? Be that, however, as it may, really seems to us that the punishment inflicted upon the boy is shamefully disproportionate with his offence; and we also think the pranks of the Leeds magistrates, as well as the vagaries of the South Shields justices, should be made subjects for investigation by the Home Secretary.

THE CASUAL POOR AND GENEROUS “GUARDIANS.”¹⁶

Do we live in a Christian country? Nominally and legally considered, we do; in reality, and according to the tone and teaching of the New Testament, we do not. It is true we are blessed—or cursed—with a State Church, presided over by her “sacred” Majesty, the Queen, and a pompous, pretentious, pelf-loving hierarchy of arch-prelates and prelates, who clearly—as an example unto others—“make the best of both words,” and, therefore, are “wise in their generation.” It is moreover true that those ecclesiastical, lawn-sleeved potentates enjoy princely salaries, inhabit princely palaces, and keep up courtly retinues of clerical and semi-clerical subordinates, ranking from the dignified office of a dean to the very undignified office of a verger. In addition, we have countless churches scattered over the country, and a whole army of clergy, of major and minor degree. These week after week remind us from the reading-desk, the altar, and the pulpit, that “we are all brethren”—that we should “love one another”—“do good unto all men; but especially to those who are of the household of faith”—in addition to a number of similar excellent admonitions. One would think, from the profusion of professions, made, that the apostolic spirit actuated every member of the Church, and that we had “all things in common.”

Alas! What a delusion! On Sunday professions ill accord with our every-day practice. What doleful, dreadful tales do we not daily read in the newspapers? How they harrow up the soul, and cause the blood to chill in one’s veins! We find by one journal how sordidly avaricious is that blind, crownless monarch, George of Hanover; and how he successfully sues in the Vice-Chancellor’s Court for the sum of over half a million—derived from the revenues of the electoral domain—which was invested, in 1783, in behalf of the reigning Elector of Hanover, King George III, and is now safely stored in the coffers of the Bank of England—a “godsend” which will materially help to alleviate “the sorrows of a poor old man.” In the same paper we alight upon a startling story, perfectly tragical in its nature. It records an inquest held upon a girl aged twelve years, at the Pitt’s Head Tavern, Bethnal-green. Her father, who was a shoemaker, died but three weeks ago. Hence his widow is left with a family of three children to support. Her utmost earnings amount to the munificent sum of two shillings and sixpence a-week, which she obtains by washing. Out of this paltry pittance she struggles—heaven only knows with what agony—to keep life in herself and her helpless orphans. In a week or ten days all the children are attacked by fever. Hence the miserable mother, crushed with sorrow upon sorrow, is compelled by sheer necessity to seek aid from the parish. She applies for relief, and this is the manner in which it is given. That magnificent official, the relieving officer, orders her two shillings in money and two shillings worth of bread!—Thinking, no doubt, with the singular sagacity of his class, that a wedge of a dry, hard loaf was very suitable for, and would be eagerly devoured by, fever-stricken children. The mother likewise—what noble philanthropy!—obtains an order for the medical man, who, however, happens not to “turn up.” Many hours elapse before the sick child is seen by a substitute for the parish doctor; and then his visit is made so late as nine o’clock at night. The following morning the poor mother wends her way to the “house” to receive her dole of bread. Upon returning to her dismal room she finds one of her children stark and cold on the floor!—its spirit passed away to Him who gave it. An inquest was duly held. The doctor says that the child had died from the effects of fever; and the sapient coroner’s jury returns the verdict, “Death from natural causes.” And all this occurs in Bethnal-green, of which parish Miss Burdett Coutts is one of the guardians. We wonder if any sanctimonious scripture-reader or pious proselytizer called in the interim and left a tract.

Last week we published the “Experiences of a Working Man in Workhouse.” It is a pithy and graphic narrative, and reveals a condition of things which is not only disgraceful but criminal. Driven by pinching poverty, and bent on search of work, the writer had to seek temporary shelter in no less than twenty-seven unions; only in one of which—that is, Birmingham—does a “casual” appear to be treated like a human being, much less a Christian brother. Here is an entry:—“Burton-on-Trent: No supper, no breakfast, no bed. A board to sleep on, covered by an old hop bag. I was insulted, sneered at, and told I had no business to allow hair to grow on my face until I could support myself.” And this in the region of wealthy brewers—the Basses and the Allsopps, who owe their fortunes mainly to the working man’s credulity in the wholesome and nutritious character of their ale! As Tom Hood says—

“Alas for the rarity Of Christian charity Under the sun.”

But particularly in Burton-upon-Trent! But let us turn to Lichfield, which our correspondent terms, naively enough, “the home of a bishop.” Surely, episcopal influence will be found manifested in the workhouse of that famous cathedral city?

THE FATAL RIOTING AT MOLD.¹⁷

The poor woman, Elizabeth Jones, who was shot in the riot, has since died, and the coroner held an inquest on the body. The jury returned a verdict of “Justifiable homicide.” While the inquest was going on the police made their appearance in the cottage of Mrs. Jones, where the dead body lay, and took the deceased’s husband, Isaac Jones, into custody on a charge of having been concerned in the disturbances.

On Monday, the following persons, who had been apprehended on a charge of taking an active part in the riot at Mold, last week, were brought before the justices at the County Hall: —William Griffiths, collier; Benjamin Tatham, gentleman’s servant; William Thomas Jones, collier; Isaac Jones, collier; John Roberts, driver; and Roland Jones, collier.

Mr. Taylor, solicitor, Flint, appeared for the prisoners Isaac Jones and William Thomas Jones. The other prisoners were undefended.

Mr. Browne, chief constable of Flintshire, deposed that on the previous Wednesday evening a mob of about one thousand five hundred colliers commenced hustling and throwing stones at the police and soldiers who had in charge the two prisoners committed to goal for committing an assault upon Mr. Young, manager of the Lees-wood Green Colliery. The first stone was thrown by a woman, and immediately afterwards the stone-throwing became general from all directions, the object of the rioters evidently being to rescue the two prisoners, and several of his men were struck with stones and knocked down. The volleys of stones hurled at the military and police darkened the air, and he saw several of his men bleeding from the face and head, the blood streaming down their uniforms. It was impossible for any of them to go out and face the mob. If a magistrate had gone out of the station to read the Riot Act he would certainly have been murdered. Life was decidedly in great and imminent danger at that moment in the station. The witness called upon Captain Blake, the officer in command of the military, to protect himself and his own men and the constables by firing into the mob. He refused to do so. The witness thought it was necessary to have a magistrate’s order to justify firing, and he said to a magistrate, Mr. Clough, “For God’s sake give the order to fire, or we shall be all murdered!” He then shouted out, as loudly as he could, “Fire!” The commanding officer even then was very reluctant to allow his men to fire, although at that moment his face was covered with blood, and blood was also streaming from a wound at the back of his head. Some of the soldiers, who were very severely cut, were writhing under the pain they were suffering. They wished to fire, but the captain held them back. One private who was wounded charged his rifle, and was about to step towards the station-gate with his rifle pointed towards the mob, when one of the officers caught hold of him round the waist and drew him back off his legs, at the same time crying out, “For God’s sake don’t fire!” The stone-throwing all this time was continued, the mob even coming round to the platform and across the line on the opposite side of the railway. The police and military were thus surrounded by the rioters, and he again called upon the officers to fire on their assailants. Immediately after witness heard the discharge of a rifle, followed by other shots. The officers were holding their men back, and using every effort to check them in firing, cautioning them not to take human life. They said, “For God’s sake, men, don’t fire where there’s no necessity for it!” To the best of his judgment, twelve or fifteen shots were fired, and then the mob dispersed, and the few soldiers that were firing were ordered back to the platform. The greatest number of shots was fired from the yard behind the station. One or two shots were fired from the station gate. There was no volley firing, only dropping shots, with long intervals between the firing. Witness recognized Isaac Jones as being in the crowd in the courtyard as the escort with the prisoners in charge was startling for the station, but did not see him throw stones. He could not speak to any of the other prisoners.

Sergeant Hughes and several other police officers gave corroborative evidence, and identified all the prisoners as having taken part in the riot.

Captain Blake, who was in command of the soldiers, was called. The officer had plasters upon his head and face where he had been hit with stones. On Wednesday he received an order from his commanding officer at Chester to take fifty men to Mold, and he did so. He brought them to the county hall, and escorted the police, who had two prisoners in their charge, to the railway station. As they were proceeding down the road to the station, stone-throwing began, and it increased tremendously as the escort approached the station. Several of the soldiers were struck down by the missiles that were hurled at them, and bled very much. The gateway leading to the station being fastened, it occupied some time to get the police and soldiers through a narrow doorway which formed the only other access to the station. It was impossible for anyone to have gone out and talked to the crowd. He did not give the order to fire until Mr. Clough, a magistrate from Chester, told him to do so. He had not been able since, by examining the men’s ammunition, to ascertain the number of shots that had been fired, because some of the cartridges had been lost. Witness considered that life was in danger in the station, and that it was quite necessary for the soldiers to fire upon the mob. They did not use blank cartridge, and they were not allowed under such circumstances to fire above the heads of the rioters. There were twenty-three out of the fifty soldiers wounded on the occasion. They did not intentionally fire over the heads of the rioters.

Mr. Taylor applied for and obtained an adjournment, on the ground that he had only just received instructions to defend the prisoners, and wished for time to get up the defense. He also applied for bail on behalf of Isaac Jones, who wanted to see his wife buried; and, after some consultation, the bench granted it, requiring two sureties of 50l. each and the prisoner in 50l.

EX-GOVERNOR SIR GEORGE GREY ON THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER IN ENGAND.¹⁸

TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS.

SIR,—I feel great anxiety as to the effects likely to be produced upon the public mind by the language which one of her Majesty’s present advisers has used regarding the condition of the agricultural poor in England. The language I allude to is of the following nature.

The laboring man had undoubtedly risen, his wages were raised, his dwelling was being attended to more and more, they were looking after his education, and all classes of agriculturists were in a more prosperous state than was ever known before.

Now, there is the clearest evidence to show that the position of the labourer is in some essential respects worse than perhaps for centuries has been the case.

Especially within the last twenty or thirty years the evil has been in very rapid increase and now in the highest degree deplorable. Except in so far as they whom his labour enriches see fit to treat him with a kind of pitiful indulgence, he is quite peculiarly helpless in the matter. Whether he shall find house-room on the land which he contributes to till, whether the house-room which he gets shall be human or swinish, whether he shall have the little space of garden that so vastly lessens the pressure of his poverty—all this does not depend on his willingness and ability to pay reasonable rent for the decent accommodation he requires, but depends on the use which others may see fit to make of their “right to do as they will with their own.”

I am quoting from the report made to the Privy Council, by their medical officers, on the house accommodation of rural labourers. The report then goes on to show, that the existing laws do not reserve for the labourer ever “so little right in that soil to which his industry is as needful as sun and rain;” that it has now become in many cases impossible for him to attain “the bit of garden which would be almost wealth to him, and for which he would cheerfully pay the outside rent which it is worth, whilst his money would have been as good as another man’s.” The report then points out that in the belief of the writers of it the miseries of the poor are in great part, at least, to be attributed to the influence of the Poor-law, which gives to each parish a pecuniary interest in reducing to a minimum the number of its resident labourers.

Who throw a burthen on land, which large proprietors feel very definitely and considerably, and while feeling it cannot but know that they have facilities, which are deemed not to be illegal, for shifting it away from themselves. They have but to resolve that there shall be no labourers’ dwellings on their estates, and their estates will thenceforth be virtually free from half their responsibilities for the poor. How far it has been intended in the English constitution and law that this kind of unconditionable property in land should be acquirable, and that a landlord “doing as he wills with his own,” should be able to treat the cultivators of the soil as aliens whom he may expel from his territory, is a question which I do not pretend to discuss. But I think it all-important that the working of this system should be clearly seen by those who can judge it in its legal as well as in its moral relations.

The report also states this terrible fact:

Unhappily, agricultural labour, instead of implying a safe and permanent independence for the hardworking labourer and his family, implies for the most part only a longer or shorter circuit to eventual pauperism—a pauperism which during the whole circuit is so near, that any illness, or temporary failure of occupation, necessitates immediate recourse to parochial relief.

It must not be thought that the power of eviction on the part of landlords, to which I allude in this letter, exists only in theory; on the contrary,

On a very large scale it prevails in practice—prevails as a main governing condition in the household circumstances of agricultural labour. Besides the extreme cases, where houses of a parish were pulled down in the teeth of an increasing population, there were also innumerable parishes where the demolition of houses was going on more rapidly than any lessening of the population could explain. When the process of depopulation has completed itself, the result is a show village where the cottages have been reduced to a few, and where none but persons who are needed as shepherds, gardeners, or gamekeepers are allowed to live, regular servants, who receive the good treatment usual to their class. But the land requires cultivation, and it will be found that the labourers employed upon it are not the tenants of the owner, but that they come from a neighbouring open village, perhaps three miles off, where a numerous small proprietary had received them when their cottages were destroyed in the close villages around. When things are tending to the above result, often the cottages which stand testify, in their unrepaired and wretched condition, to the extinction to which they are doomed. They are seen standing in the various stages of natural decay. While the shelter holds together, the labourer is permitted to rent it; and glad enough he will often he to do so, even at the price of a decent lodging. But no repair, no improvement shall it receive, except such as its penniless occupants can supply. And when at last it becomes quite uninhabitable—uninhabitable even according to the humblest standard of serfdom—it will be but one more destroyed cottage, and future poor rates will be somewhat lightened.

Aye; so much for the cottage, one more destroyed cottage in one parish out of the innumerable parishes in which this process is going on, but what of the one more family of human souls driven forth from that cottage? They are, for the most part, driven forth to a fate so cruel and terrible that I hesitate to write it. Another set of commissioners in the year 1867 traced out in part the condition of these unhappy beings whilst engaged in an inquiry totally independent of the report from which I have already quoted. On a future occasion I propose to analyze that report, but it is a sad task to enter upon, and discloses depths of human misery which are a disgrace to our race. But the report proceeds:

While great owners are thus escaping from poor-rates through the depopulation of the lands over which they have control, the nearest town or open village receives the evicted labourers; the nearest, I say, but this “nearest” may be three or four miles distant from the farm where the labourer has his daily toil. To that daily toil there will then have to be added, as though it were nothing, the daily need of walking six or eight miles for power of earning his bread, and whatever farm work is done by his wife and children is done at the same disadvantage. Nor is this nearly all the evil which the distance occasions him. In the open village cottage speculators buy scraps or land which they throng as densely as they can with the cheapest of all possible hovels, and into those wretched habitations (which even if they adjoin the open country have some of the worst features of the worst town residences) crowd the agricultural labourers of England.

The report of the medical officers of the Privy Council for the year following the report which I have already quoted (1865) shows what are the worst features of these town residences:

It is scarcely possible for the better-off classes to imagine, whose duty has not given them opportunities of practically knowing, what immensity of baneful influence is included in the evils to which I advert, and it may therefore be well for me to show what in practice are the forms in which the evils present themselves. By places unfit for human habitation I mean places in which, by common consent, even moderately healthy life is impossible to human dwellers—places which, therefore, in themselves(independently of removable filth which may be about them) answer to the common conceptions of nuisances—such, for instance, as those underground dwellings which permanently are almost, or entirely, dark and unventilatable and dwellings which are in such constructional partnership with public privies, or other depositaries of filth, that their very sources of ventilation are essentially offensive and injurious, and dwellings which have such relation to local drainage that they are habitually soaked into by water or sewage, and so forth. But beyond these instances, where the dwelling would, I think, even now be deemed by common consent unfit for human habitation, instances, varying in degree, are innumerable where in small closed courts, surrounded by high buildings, and approached by narrow and perhaps winding gangways, houses of the meanest sort stand, acre after acre of them, brick to brick, shut from all enjoyment of light and air, with but privies and dustbins to look upon, and surely such can only be counted fit for human habitation while the standard of that humanity is low.

Then follow in the report I am now quoting from accounts of the habitual overcrowding of these wretched residences, so shocking that I hesitate to quote them, accompanied with this general statement on the subject:

Though my official point of view is one exclusively physical, common humanity requires that the other aspect of this evil should not be ignored. For where overcrowding exists in its sanitary sense, almost always it exists even more perniciously in certain moral senses. In its higher degree it almost necessarily involves such negation of all delicacy, such unclean confusion of bodies and bodily functions, such mutual exposure of animal and sexual nakedness as is rather bestial than human. To be subject to these influences is a degradation which must become deeper and deeper for those on whom it continues to work. To children who are born under its curse it must often be a very baptism into infamy.

It is into these wretched habitations that now crowd the agricultural labourers of England from the innumerable parishes where the demolition of houses is going on more rapidly than any lessening of the population can explain, as well as from those parishes where the houses are pulled down in the teeth of an increasing population.

HOW CRIMINALS ARE MADE.¹⁹²⁰

TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY NEWS.

SIR,—The following paragraph I have cut from a Lincoln paper of to-day. Middle Rasen is about sixteen miles from this city.

“THEFT BY A GIRL.—On Monday last, at the magistrates’ room, before the Rev. W. W. Cooper, and R. R. Dixon, Esq., Ann Wright, aged 14, was charged by the Rev. A. Hughes, curate of Middle Rasen, with stealing the sum of three pence, his property. The prosecutor occupies furnished rooms at Middle Rasen, and the defendant, an orphan from the union, was recently engaged as servant of all work by Mr. Fieldsend, the landlord. It appeared that the prosecutor had been in the habit of leaving sums of money about in his room, and eventually, as might have been expected, missed three pence. Defendant pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to one month’s imprisonment at Kirton, and at the end of that term to be sent to a reformatory for four years.”

We are amazed at the rapid growth of our criminal classes, but we need not be after reading this and similar statements. Alas, poor orphan girl, only 14, taken from a workhouse, sent to be schooled at a prison for stealing three pence from “Rev. A. Hughes, curate of Middle Rasen,” who was in the habit of “leaving money about,” and probably to “matriculate” at the reformatory afterwards. This is “justices’ justice,” perhaps, but it is not God’s and it is a crying shame that the administration of the laws of this country should be left in the hands of such dabblers as these magistrates evidently are. Unfortunately such incidents are very common in this and other agricultural counties.—I am, &c.,

P. N. A. Lincoln, August 21.

OUTRAGEROUSLY SERVER SENTENCE.—²¹

John Ryan, 62, a labourer, was charged with obtaining by false pretenses 22s. and 257lbs. of bread from Mr. Henry Edmonds, relieving officer of Kensington Workhouse Mr. Edmonds said, that on the 13th of December, the prisoner applied for relief for himself, his wife, and four children. He said that his eldest child was named James, age ten and a-half, and that his other children were Catherine, aged eight Ellen nine, and William, aged six. He was cautioned that if his children were over sixteen he was not entitled to relief for them. A single man would only get 6d. a-day and 1lb. of bread; a married man was only entitled to 8d. a-day and 2lbs. of bread. By making the statement that his children were under sixteen, and dependent upon him, he obtained 1l. 2s. in money and 257lbs. of bread, worth 1l. 13s., more than he was entitled to. Witness had cautioned him about his statement that his children were under eleven. His youngest child was over sixteen. Prisoner: I never had relief. I broke nine bushels of stones every day, and for that he paid me 10d. I was at work twenty-six weeks. The Judge: The point is not that you did not do the work, but that you obtained extra pay by an untruth. Prisoner: If 10d. a day is too much for a man it is a wonder. The Judge: That is the law. I am not saying it is right, but that is the law. Prisoner (to the relieving officer): You are the man who is taking the parish money, and not the man who is getting 10d. a-day for his work. Evidence having been given that the children of the prisoner were over sixteen years, he said, “What have my children to do with the breaking of stones? I am the man that has got to do that. I do not know the ages of my children. I never booked their ages. He gave me 10d.; if he gave me too much I never knew the rule.” Mr. Edmonds: The children must be under the age of sixteen years to be entitled to relief. The judge: It is a serious matter for the ratepayers, who ought not to be defrauded. The jury returned a verdict of “Guilty,” with a recommendation to mercy. Mr. Edmonds then handed in a list of previous convictions which a sergeant of police had given him. The sergeant was not present to prove the facts alleged in the document. The Judge: I suspect that these are charges against the son of the prisoner, and we cannot punish the father for them. One is six months for stealing. Mr. Edmonds: His daughter states that it does apply to the son, but he has been bound over for beating his wife. The prisoner: She is given to drink. Mr. Edmonds: She is a hard-working woman. The prisoner’s daughter, having been sworn, said: I am sixteen. My mother is not given to drink. He used to bring the bread home, but mother threw it out of the window at 43, Yecman’s-row, Brompton, and called it “parish bread.” She has collected a mob before the house. The witness Payne saw her do it. Samuel Payne (an old pauper): I never did. Mr. Edmonds: What the daughter is may be known when I say that she comes home very early in the morning. The daughter: I am a laundress. The Judge: I do not believe your evidence. The sentence is nine months’ hard labour.

ROBBERY BY FRIENDS.—²²

John Buckhurst, 21, a letter-carrier, and Charles Ashton, 20, a riveter, were indicted for stealing a Bank of England note value 20l, the property of William Turner. Both the prisoners pleaded “Guilty.” The prosecutor was a young man who had lately taken a beer-house at 290, Bethnal-green-road, and he said that on the 15th of July he went to lodge with the prisoner Ashton, at 11, Old Bethnal-green-road. On Sunday, the 19th, he met the prisoner Buckhurst, and he went to sleep at the house. They made up a bed with their clothes, and all went to sleep. Witness rolled up and left four 20l. notes and 16l. in gold. He then placed his watch and chain at the foot of the bed. There was another man sleeping in the same room, and at six o’clock in the morning he awoke witness, and the watch and chain were then missing, and the prisoners were gone. He afterwards saw his purse at the Liverpool police-station. The prisoners were old friends of his. It will be recollected that the money belonged to a woman whom the prosecutor was going to marry, and with her consent it was handed back to him. The prisoners were then sentenced to eighteen months’ hard labour.

EXTRAORDINARY CASE OF BABY-FARMING.²³

On Monday afternoon, Mr. Richards, the deputy-coroner, held an inquiry at the Fountain Tavern, Virginia-row, Hackney-road, respecting the death of Arthur Fuller Gilroy, aged seven weeks.

The jury having been sworn, proceeded to Miss Burdett Coutts’s Model Lodging-houses, No. 102, Columbia-square, where they saw, in a room on the ground-floor, two babies. One lay dead in a coffin, and it weighed four and a half pounds. The other baby was a fat child ten months old, and its weight was one stone, ten pounds. Its mother said, “It didn’t get a prize, for there were so many beautiful babies like it at the show,” referring to the recent “Baby Show” at the Woolwich Gardens.

Mrs. Louisa Gilroy, of No. 32, Richmond-road, Barnsbury, stated that her husband, Francis Gilroy, a comedian, had died on the 20th of December. He left her with three children, and she was compelled to become forewoman at a shop in order to support them. Towards the end of June the deceased was born, and when it was a few hours old, Mrs. Susannah Smith, the wife of a hot-presser, living at No. 102, Columbia-square, took it to her home. Once or twice a week later that, witness saw the child, and it was nothing but skin and bone. It was a complete skeleton from its birth. Mrs. Smith had asked witness seven shillings a-week to take care of the child, but she ultimately agreed to take five shillings a-week. She fed the child on breast-milk for a month, and then she fed it on milk and corn-flour. Witness did not think that the child was starved. It was impossible to care for the child at home, for if that had been done the whole family must have starved. Since the death of her husband, she and her children had been half-starved. He was not a member of the Royal Dramatic College, and she received no money from any public institution.

Mrs. Susannah Smith said: I never advertised in a newspaper that I would take care of children. When I took charge of the deceased, it was left to my option as to whether I should feed it on the breast or not. I fed it on the breast for a fortnight, and then I found that I could not feed two children on the breast, so I fed it on corn flour and milk. I fed my own child on the breast. He is a beauty of a baby. I took him to the show at Woolwich Gardens. Oh, he is a beauty. He did not get a prize, for there were so many babies there. I was at the show with him for four days. I left the deceased at home while I was at the show. I could not suckle two babies, and that was the reason why I bought a bottle for him. While I was at the show I left him in charge of a woman. He died on Wednesday. I can, if you like, bring my baby here and show him to you; he is a beauty.

A juror: No; we want to hear about the dead one.

Mr. H. B. Lilley, M.R.C.S., said that the deceased weighed 4½ lbs. It measured ten inches round the chest, and it was sixteen inches in length. There was very little fluid in the stomach. It had died from exhaustion and diarrhœa. It was a pitiable object after death.

The Coroner said that the case was a very painful one, and

The jury returned a verdict “That the deceased child expired from the effects of exhaustion.”

SCANDALOUS TREATMENT OF THE POOR.²⁴

On Tuesday, Dr. Hardwicke, deputy-coroner, held an inquest at the College Arms, in Crowndale-road, Camden-town, on the body of James Crew, aged fifty-nine, a coachman, who died in the infirmary of the St. Pancras workhouse. It appeared that the deceased some time ago attempted to commit suicide, and, after having been taken to the House of Detention, was removed first to the insane ward of the workhouse, and then to Colney-hatch Asylum as insane. He was discharged from Colney-hatch as cured towards the end of last year, and then received 5s. and three loaves a week from St. Pancras as out-door relief. The guardians a short time ago discontinued this relief, and said the man, his wife, and three children, must go into the house if they required more relief. The wife objected to break up her home, as she received 10s. a week for minding a gentleman’s house, with which she was enabled to pay 4s. 6d. a week and support her three children. The husband, however, went into the house. The Discharge Committee suggested to him (as admitted by the relieving officer) that what little goods his wife had must be sold to pay part of his maintenance, and that the whole family must come into the house. The wife of deceased objected to give up her lodging and sell her goods, as she said the person whose house she was minding might return at a moment’s notice and then she would have nowhere to go to. She objected to go into the workhouse, and alleges that she told the relieving officer she would support her husband out of the house if the guardians only would allow her 1s. or 1s. 6d. per week. This the relieving officer did not remember, but he stated that he advised the Discharge Committee to continue the out-door relief as a better course than pauperizing the whole family. The committee did not agree with this, but insisted that the home must be broken up and the goods sold. Before any action, however, was taken the man died. The widow said the threat of the committee to sell them up preyed upon deceased’s mind, and when she visited him in the workhouse he said he should get on very well “only for that horrid committee.” He several times said he dreaded going before those men again. She believed his death was accelerated by anxiety, the result of the way the committee treated him. The medical evidence showed that death was caused by apoplexy. Mr. Watson, one of the minority of the Board of Guardians, said if the alleged threat had been held out, it was a most unusual and inhuman one. A juror said there was great blame to the guardians for acting as they had done. Dr. Hardwicke said it was the fault of the Poor-law system. Mr. Watson said, in spite of the Poor-law, they often gave out-door relief sooner than break up the homes of the poor. The foreman of the jury (Mr. Ward) said it was a wretched policy to try to make this poor woman give up a situation of ten shillings a week, sell what goods she had, and go into the workhouse with her children because her husband was too ill to work for his own living. A juror said if that was the policy of their new guardians it was a disgrace to them. After a short deliberation, the jury returned a verdict that death was the result of natural causes, but they appended a resolution, “That a more judicious temporary or permanent system of outdoor relief for the honest poor would be the most economical system to ratepayers, and would be more in accordance with the requirements of the poor, than breaking up their homes and compelling them to become permanent inmates of the workhouse.

SUPPLYING BAD BREAD TO A WORKHOUSE.²⁵

The Poor-law guardians of the Brackley Union met the other day to investigate charges preferred by the Rev. Francis Litchfield, an ex officio guardian, against Mr. Walton, bread contractor to the union, of supplying unwholesome bread, and against the relieving officers, Messrs. Curtis and Heath, with conniving at this being done. Mr. Peel, Poor-law inspector, was present during the inquiry. The Rev. F. Litchfield and several other witnesses gave evidence that the bread was bad. Mr. Curtis stated that he commenced to buy bread from Mr. Walton for his own family, in order that if it was bad he might bring it before the board. But it never was bad, although taken out of the cart from which bread to the poor was delivered. He admitted, however, that he had told Mr. Coleman, one of the guardians, that at one end of Walton’s cart there was good bread, and at the other heavy bread. Thomas Watts, an old man in receipt of outdoor relief at Horton, said he had lived on Walton’s bread for two years, and never yet had cause to complain; but sometimes, he admitted, when pressed by one of the guardians, it got a little moldy. Mr. Litchfield said he had asked some of the poor people why they did not complain, and their answer was, “For fear that the bread should be taken off, and they be compelled to go into the workhouse.” The Poor-law inspector, after bearing the evidence, said the case against the relieving officers was one which, if the guardians thought fit, would have to go before the Poor-law board. The guardians should have taken the trouble of seeing the bread occasionally themselves, and tasting it. Not only were they bound to see that it was good when new, but that it would keep a reasonable time. Mr. Peel then left, and the guardians after discussing the question, passed a resolution calling upon Mr. Walton to fulfill his contract according to sample, and stating that in future his tenders would not be received by the board. Another resolution was also adopted reprimanding the relieving officers, and directing them in future, when bad bread was supplied, to purchase good bread, and charge the difference in price to the contractor.

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SUFFOCATION OF AN ENTIRE FAMILY THROUGH DESTITUTION.²⁶

A dreadful crime was perpetrated on Tuesday in a row of cottages off St. Leonard’s-road, Poplar, the east end of London, where the entire family of a mechanic recently thrown out of work, was destroyed with the utmost deliberation. It has been ascertained that the perpetrators or at least the chief perpetrator of the murder was Jonathan Judge, a driller employed in the building of iron ships, who had been for a long time out of employment. He resided with his wife, Clara Judge, a native of Devonshire, and his daughter Louisa, aged four years, and an infant son, Charles, aged ten months, at 18, Bromley cottages, St. Leonard’s road, not far from the East India Docks. During the great depression in the ship building trade, he was for a period of ten months wholly unemployed, and one of his children died, and the infant Charles was born. These combined circumstances threw the family into extreme distress, but they never applied to the workhouse for any relief, even though they were often dependent on the kindness of a neighbour for food. Their principal resource was a pawnshop, but a local club, the Great Eastern, gave some assistance on the occasion of the child’s death. Some six weeks ago, Judge got work at Messrs. Dudgeon’s shipbuilding-yard, but in three weeks the great fire occurred at Messrs. Dudgeon’s, and Judge was consequently again thrown out of work. This new blow seems quite to have overwhelmed him and his wife. A fortnight ago Mrs. Judge, while recounting her troubles to her next-door neighbour, Mrs. Farmer, of 17, Bromley-cottages, said her husband the night before had said something in a very peculiar way. He said, according to her, “I know a way of ending the whole thing. It is a very easy way that I have heard of. It is not my life or your life that I care about; but I do care about the children.”

On Monday evening Judge was summoned to attend a meeting of his club to consider whether a young man who had broken his leg in a fight should be assisted out of the club funds. The club meeting over, Judge returned to 18, Bromley-cottages, and finding his wife absent, he knocked at Mrs. Farmer’s wall to attract her attention. Mrs. Judge went to her husband, who appears to have fetched some beer in a can. He then, with some paste, which had been previously made for the purpose, carefully covered all the chinks of the windows with brown paper. He next went into the yard, and chopped up a great quantity of wood. He was so long engaged in this occupation that one of his neighbours gave him some pieces ready shopped, which he accepted. When he went indoors, nothing further was seen or heard of the family until half-past nine o’clock on Tuesday morning.

The neighbours finding that, contrary to custom, the Judges made no sign of stirring so late as half-past nine o’clock, and the singular words of Mrs. Judge a fortnight ago being called to mind, the police were communicated with. Sergeant Holton, of the K division, and Police-constable 299 K, at once proceeded to the spot, and with the aid of a ladder got in at the upper floor windows, and breaking the glass drew aside the blind. The fumes of charcoal were at once perceptible. The spectacle in the room was terrible. Judge and his wife lay on the bed in their night-dresses, and uncovered by the bed-clothes; Mrs. Judge was on her back, and Judge, by her side, clasped her in his arms, his head reclining on her breast. The infant was on the mother’s left side, and the little girl Louisa was nestling close to her father. All four were quite dead. The children had apparently died in their sleep without a pang. It was then seen that the door had been as carefully covered with paper to exclude air from the crevices as the window had been. A portion of an old milk can, which stood near the table and not far from the foot of the bed, had served as a brazier for the charcoal. The wood which had been given to Judge by the neighbour on Monday evening was found untouched, but the quantity of wood which he had himself cut up had disappeared, and it is therefore supposed that he had used it to intensify the fumes of the charcoal, of which he must have possessed himself with a view to the destruction of his family. Mr. Matthew Brownfield, police-surgeon, of the East India-road, was at once sent for, but he pronounced death to have occurred some considerable time previously.

On examining the premises more carefully two letters were found, one of which contained the words,—“Give the eight-day clock to Ben Jonathan Judge.” The other was a much longer document. It minutely specified the household things of which the family was possessed, and directed their distribution among their relatives. It is signed, or at least purports to be signed, by “Jonathan Judge” and “Clara Judge” This fact leads to the supposition that Judge persuaded his wife to join him in destroying the whole family, and, indeed, from the position in which the body was found—clasped in his arms, and with the eyes open, showing that she had not been suffocated in her sleep—there is a difficulty in accepting any other theory of the affair. But Mrs. Judge declares the signature, “Clara Judge”, is a forgery of her husband’s, who, according to her account, only imitated his wife’s writing very unskillfully.

THE INQUEST.²⁷

On Wednesday, Mr. John Humphreys, the Middlesex corner, held an investigation at the St. Leonard’s Arms Tavern, St. Leonard’s-road, Bromley, respecting the deaths of Jonathan Judge aged thirty-three years, Clara Ann Judge, aged thirty-three years, Louisa Emily Judge, aged three years, and that of Judge, aged ten months.

Henry Judge stated that he was the brother of the deceased man. Witness was a driller living at No. 37, Inglehorn-terrace, Millwall. His brother was a driller, residing at 18, Bromley-cottages. The deceased woman was the wife of the man, and the children found lying dead in the bed were theirs. Witness has never heard his brother threaten to destroy his life. The letters produced were in the handwriting of his brother.

Mrs. Harriet Farmer said the deceased family lived next door to her. On Monday night, at half-past nine o’clock, witness heard the deceased woman chopping a piece of very hard wood. It was so hard that witness gave her a softer piece. That was the last time witness saw her.

Mrs. Clara MʼGennis, 13. Bromley Cottages, was called, and said that on Monday night she and her husband saw the deceased man Judge near his own house. Witness said, “There you are,” and her husband cried out to him, “I’ll have your curls.” He made no reply. Witness had seen Mrs. Judge on the previous Friday, and she then said, “My husband is out of work, and there is no likelihood of his getting any.” She then walked towards the door, and then back again, as if she had something on her mid, and was afraid that she would tell it.

In answer to the coroner, Mrs. MʼGennis said that she knew the handwriting of the deceased woman, as she had often seen her sign a rent-book. She felt confident that the deceased woman intended to communicate something to her on the Friday, for she “seemed to hold her words back” as she was walking away from her.

Dr. Matthew Brownfield said there were no marks of violence externally on any of the bodies, which were all well-nourished and clean. He made a post mortem examination of the body of the woman by order. He found that the flesh was of a bright red color. The woman had died from the effects of carbonic acid, resulting from suffocation by charcoal. The man was evidently standing by the bed-side, and then he fell across the bodies of his wife and children, when the fumes of the charcoal had overpowered him. All the family died from suffocation.

Mrs. Eleanor Wilson said that the deceased woman was her sister, and that her husband was a little given to drink, and was very irritable. When he “took a drop” it affected his head. The writing, “Clara Judge,” on the letter, was her sisterʼs.

Robert Thorne, a driller, said that he knew that deceased’s family was in great poverty, for the man had been out of work for a long time. Witness, who was also out of employment, in consequence of the depression in the iron shipbuilding trade, was constantly with him. He was a very quiet man. He had been eight years a soldier in the 24 h Foot, and had served out in Bombay. The deceased had never complained of having received a sun stroke in India, and when he was out of work he said, “I wish I was back in India again.” His wages, when in work, were a guinea a week.

Sergeant Holton, 26 K, said that he found in the room two papers, on one of which was written the words, “I give the old family clock to my brother, Robert Judge, of Kew Gardens. (Signed) J. Judge” The next document was as follows,—“13th September. I, J. Judge, hereby certify and leave to Elanor Wilson all we possess. (Signed) J. Judge, Clara Judge”. The signatures were in the handwritings of the two deceased persons.

Some further evidence was taken, and the jury, after an hour’s deliberation, returned a verdict of “Wilful murder against Jonathan and Clara Judge, and that they had destroyed their own lives while in a state of unsound mind.”

HOW HABITUAL CRIMINALS ARE MADE.²⁸

“Thou shalt not steal.” Once a week, all the year round, the priest from the altar proclaims, in solemn tone, this charge; to which the congregation piously respond, “Lord have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law.” Custom frequently renders things not only familiar, but absolutely foolish. Only fancy a well-dressed, well-to-do, highly-perfumed assembly of church-goers gravely repeating such pregnant words after the clergyman’s warning. Seriously considered, it seems offensive to presume that anyone who composes a fashionable, or, indeed, ordinary genteel, congregation of worshippers, would possess the slightest tendency to theft. Hence, one would suppose, this commandment, at least, might with propriety be expunged from the Decalogue as being only suited to “ragged Christmas” and “ragged charities.” But it is extremely difficult to conceive how select congregations can patiently bear with such a commandment being read to them, or how they can audibly join in a petition to the Almighty, having a due sense of the force and implication of the words they use. If the tendency to steal be so interwoven with human nature that we have constantly to pray to be delivered from the evil, it ought to make us merciful to those whose passion gets the victory over them, especially when this passion is pricked by the spur of adversity, and when the theft committed is trivial.

We all recognize the essential sentiment or principle of justice, but we do not all agree as to what constitutes it. As Hume remarks, “The rules of equity or justice depend entirely on the particular state and condition in which men are placed, and owe their origin and existence to that utility which results to the public from their strict and regular observance.” Even in order to arrive at what a person’s property is, we have to sift through statutes, customs and precedents which render the work of justice no easy task. At times, not only utility, but analogy, fails, and we are left to grope hopelessly in the dark. Now some modern administrators of justice bring not only themselves, but the majesty of the law, into complete contempt. They are set up as laughing-stocks for common-sense to jeer at. Certain silly, inexperienced, shallow-pated, would-be-virtuous squires, or equally silly, but puffed-up, coxcomb parsons, who enjoy what is called “the commission of the peace,” frequently perpetrate such flagrant antics in their administration of the law as call for severe and condign reprehension. They get the Queen’s “commission,”—not because they are learned in the law, or eminent for their judgment and discrimination; but because they possess wealth, landed estates, and local influence. No qualification beyond these is required in a modern magistrate, except he belong to the stipendiary class. Hence it is, that the law is so often and so flagrantly outraged, and common sense set at defiance. “Justices’ justice” has now grown into a by-word. This slur will needs continue until the whole tribe of petty justices be removed, and men appointed to administer the laws having a due knowledge of their duties, a becoming sense of their responsibilities, and a just respect for public opinion. An unpaid and unqualified magistracy is no slight curse. In this, as in most matters, cheap and nasty go hand-in-hand.

Only a few days since, a rigidly legal clergyman in Devon discovered an adventurous youth in his orchard purloining apples. Such a peccant “proclivity” is not unusual among boys, and a recent eminent Lord Chancellor confessed, late in life, to have perpetrated a similar heinous deed when at college. Having a sacred respect for the commandment which forbids stealing, but a more sacred regard for the rights of individual property, this smooth-faced, sleepy parson—the Rev. G. T. Lewis—had the poor culprit brought before a bench of justices, of whom Lord Poltimore was the chief. The evidence was taken in due form, and those sapient worthies felt the enormity of the boy’s offence to be such that they sentenced him to a month’s imprisonment in a common goal, and, in addition, to three years’ confinement in a reformatory!

Abominable and manifestly unjust sentences of a like nature, for comparatively slight offences, are on the increase. Not a week passes but we read of them. They not only outrage all sense of justice, but they shock the feelings even of “common” persons, who are supposed not to be particularly sensitive, like their betters. Besides, they tend to increase crime, and develop that unique class of evil-doers known as “habitual criminals;” to suppress which has been among the last efforts of the recent session of parliament. To send a young person to goal, or to a reformatory, for a first offence,—especially if it be of a trivial kind—is a grievous wrong. It is a wrong done to the petty delinquent, and a worse wrong done to society. Nothing can excuse or palliate it. One can scarcely touch pitch without becoming defiled, and the defilement generated by our gaols is notorious. If you go into these Sloughs of Despond pure—which is often the case—you come out impure, so active is the contagion. Besides, the slur sticks to you. You cannot wash off the felon’s brand, do what you might. All self-respect is gone forever. There is no getting over the loss of caste and character. Hence the tendency unquestionably is to prey on society and thus by a retributive but still wicked vengeance to punish it for its blindness.

We are conscientiously of opinion that the stupid sort of justice frequently administered by clerical and fox-hunting provincial magnates tends immensely to beget a contempt for law, to increase crime, and to the formation of habitual criminals. The county functionaries work like moles in the dark. As a rule, they know little or nothing of common law; are ignorant of the ordinary rules of evidence; and know not how to judge of an offence, or mete out proper punishment for it. They are a haughty, purse-proud class, who think themselves oligarchs in a small way. But they are, from their necessarily isolated position, narrow-minded and prejudiced in the extreme. Constantly their prejudice and passion warp their judgment, when they have any, and their decisions, in countless cases, bring on them merited odium and contempt. We shall be glad to see the whole privileged order abolished, and a legally-educated and paid magistracy appointed in their stead. In fact, it must come to this ere long. The public intelligence will not suffer such a disgrace to civilization to exist. The country has to maintain a vast body of criminals whom it cannot hope to reform. It will not suffer the administration of the laws to be placed in incompetent and blundering hands, and thereby add to an army of delinquents already formidable, under the imposing name of “habitual criminals.”

HOW EMIGRANTS ARE TREATED ON BOARD SHIP.²⁹

It needs a journey to New York in an emigrant vessel properly to appreciate what those endure who, in search of work and bread, are forced to quit their native land. Even in the best regulated steam-ships, where the berths are spacious, where ventilation is free, and where the food supplied is ample and good, there is much to endure before the end of the voyage. Unfortunately, emigrants suffer from a twofold illness—namely, sickness of the stomach and sickness of heart. To render their voyage across the Atlantic at all bearable, it is essentially necessary that their comfort should be specially studied, and, above all things, that they should be supplied with a proper amount of wholesome provisions.

In our last impression we published a “complaint” from several emigrants who had reached New York by the City of Paris. They tell a short but pithy tale. First, the bread served out to them, when they had partially got over the sea-sickness, was sour; and it was only by repeated grumbling that a better quality was supplied. The fish they received on Fridays they describe as “abominable,” the effluvia from which drove many on deck. Salt beer of pork, with pea-soup, seems to have been the usual dinner; while the supper consisted merely of weak tea and biscuit. Some of the emigrants, it is averred, only escaped sheer starvation by having had the precaution to have brought a stock of provisions with them. These are certainly grave and even serious charges to bring against a steamship company; and they, doubtless, will have to be answered, and answered in a satisfactory manner.

We have reason to know that, as a rule, emigrants are not well treated on board ship. The owners or agents of emigrant vessels only covet to make the “run” pay. They look to little or nothing besides. Some companies practice the most parsimonious economy, from which niggardliness and shabbiness the saloon passengers are not wholly exempt. Of course, there are official inspectors, who must view the ship ere she clears the port, and be satisfied that the emigrants are not overcrowded, and that the provisions are sound and abundant. But this is merely a formal proceeding. A steamer, for example, will leave Liverpool with some four or five hundred people in the steerage. Next day she will call at an Irish port, when, possibly, four or five hundred additional emigrants will be taken on board. They are sent by the agent, and the captain cannot refuse to take them, although he well knows that the space “below” is sparse and the food scanty. The evils that follow can scarcely be described. In fact, nothing can be more revolting or shocking than the scenes frequently enacted on board vessels that carry steerage passengers.

Emigrants are treated with no higher regard than if they were so many hogs. They are huddled together by hundreds between decks, in close, foul-smelling berths, where they lie for days helpless and uncared for, except, indeed, they can wait upon themselves. ‘This true that one or two stewards bring them their meals at stated intervals, or rather place them on a table formed of planks, and improvised for the occasion, so that they can either take or leave, as they have a mind. They are looked upon as “scum” and treated accordingly. All decency is openly violated, and there is a woeful lack of accommodation of a most essential kind. The scenes on board are frequently revolting; in fact, no words can adequately describe them. Owing to dirt, foul air, and low diet, sickness often occurs. But there is no hospital accommodation worth naming provided in most emigrant vessels. Small-pox now and again breaks out; but when this is the case, the infected are hidden away; nothing is said about it, and the patients may be smuggled into port, and placed in hospital, without the local authorities being made cognizant of the fact. This we have known to be done in order to escape the inconvenience and expense of quarantine.

It would be well if, next session, the attention of parliament were drawn to the treatment of steerage passengers on board emigrant ships plying between this country and North America. A more comprehensive and efficient scheme of legislation is urgently needed to correct the scandalous, and, indeed, growing, abuses at present existing. As it stands, the law is too weak, and is easily evaded; while it is to be feared that emigration inspectors are not invariably faithful in the discharge of their onerous duties. One thing is certain—that steamship companies mainly look for profit on their freight, whether it be human or otherwise. They are too often indifferent to the comfort of emigrants, and may be so parsimonious as to stint the supply of food and drugs.

Unfortunately, the “complaint” which we inserted last week is not new. It is a very common thing for emigrants to speak of the indifferent and unjust manner in which they are dealt with while at sea. That there exist grounds for their grumblings we have no manner of doubt. At the best, a journey of twelve, or may be fourteen, days across the Atlantic in the “steerage” of a steamer is no very desirable treat. By proper management, however, it might be made bearable. Of course, there can be no comfort, or even decency, where overcrowding is practiced; and we much fear that this is the rule and not the exception. Then, again, the sexes should be more carefully kept apart, while the crew should not be suffered to intermix with the female passengers. Finally, an ample supply and variety of good and wholesome food should be generously provided, and served up in a way not calculated to incite disgust and loathing.

One would think that the rivalry existing among steamship companies that run vessels across the Atlantic would of itself have rendered impossible the evils complained of. One cause of this lies in the fact that there is such an exodus from our shores that there is no dearth of human freight. The leading journal looks upon this circumstance as indicating a highly prosperous condition of the nation; and with artful sophistry endeavours to prove its assumption by force of argument, and by citing precedents. We are inclined to regard this mighty outpouring of the people in quite a different light. That wealth abounds we are not unmindful; but this wealth is locked up in a few hands. That poverty much more abounds none can gainsay; whence, tens of thousands are seeking to quit a country which, though it gave them birth, refuses to give them bread, or the means to earn it.

REVOLTING WORKHOUSE REVELATIONS.³⁰

The parish of St. Pancras has been kept in a state of angry commotion for a considerable time. The previous guardians of the poor, aware of the sad deficiency of hospital accommodation for the numerous sick who are compelled to enter the “house,” endeavoured to remedy that evil by erecting a commodious structure opposite the Small-pox Hospital. The edifice had gone far towards completion, when a cabal arose. A noisy clique of parsimonious and inhuman ratepayers got up a loud cry against it, on the ground of lavish expenditure of money for, as they maintained, an unnecessary object. The recalcitrant succeeded, and, at the recent election of guardians, gave their votes for those candidates who promised to study the interests of their constituents, and ignore the rights and necessities of the infirm poor. Hence men were elected to office who bound themselves to effect retrenchment and practice economy, no matter what principle was involved, or what sacrifice was adopted.

St. Pancras workhouse has already earned a most unenviable notoriety. Not long since circumstances were brought to light which have affixed a damning stain upon the manner in which its affairs are administered. And now comes the crowning condemnation. The details evoked at the last revelation make one shudder to dwell on. Good God! Can it be possible that, in a civilized and vauntedly Christian country, events transpire which would disgrace a savage nation were such enacted there? Yet such is the case. Our numerous readers, we are sure, will cry “Shame!” when we have recorded the shocking story.

A poor man, named Murphy, suffering from consumption, obtains an order for the St. Pancras workhouse. He is placed in an infirmary ward, and seen by the doctor, who seems to have treated his case lightly, “as there did not appear to be much the matter with him to call for immediate attention.” This was about four p.m. on the 2nd of November. At ten o’clock at night he was again seen by the medical officer, who ordered him a poultice and some cough mixture. Next day, at noon, the patient sinks and dies. His relatives are sent for, and, to avoid the exposure that may arise from an inquest, the dead body is given up to them. A practitioner, named Barnes, was induced to write out the necessary certificate of death, although he had not seen the deceased for three days previous to his demise! No wonder that the coroner should make the piquant remark—“In the three days since Mr. Barnes saw the man, that man might be murdered for all Mr. Barnes knew, or the man might be still alive; but there was the certificate of death in either case.”

Fortunately, however, something leaks out which induces Dr. Lankester, the coroner, to insist upon holding an inquest on the body of Murphy. The inquiry took place on Monday, when the most horrifying revelations were disclosed—revelations which cause the blood to creep in our veins while we write of them. At the outset we discover that the dead body was removed from the public mortuary to a house containing nine rooms, occupied by no less than twenty-seven persons, and in which malignant scarlet fever was raging. Into this fever-stricken abode the jury, of course, had to go, in order to view the body, respecting the death of which they were about to record their verdict.

According to the testimony of Dr. James Ellis, the resident medical officer of St. Pancras Workhouse, the sick man was placed in ward No. 11—which was reserved specially for male cases. There were thirty-seven cases in that ward, and as there were but twenty-eight beds, nine cases had no better accommodation than the floor! The cubic space given was about one-half the required allowance, so that the patients, through deficiency of room, had to lie between the bedsteads, down the gangways. As many as ninety-five sick people had to lie on the floor in the several wards during the previous week. The atmosphere was “very bad indeed,” and several deaths occurred lately in consequence. It was Dr. Ellis’s opinion that the death of Murphy was “accelerated” by this cause.

We believe Dr. Ellis to be a most humane and conscientious gentleman. His heart must have been deeply harrowed by the revolting state of things he was constantly obliged to witness. But what could he, a paid official, do against his masters, the board of guardians?—those petty pretentious potentates who make professions, it may be, of piety, and draw long faces at the Bethesda o’ Sundays, while the Rev. Boanerges Boreas rails against the devil and those who work wickedness. Although he could not do much directly, he might indirectly; consequently, he requests Mr. Samuel Solly, vice-president of St. Thomas’s Hospital, “to look at these wards some evening.” Mr. Solly does so; and here is his pungent testimony as to their disgraceful condition. This distinguished lecturer on surgery tells the coroner and the jury that on the night of the 4th of November he visited St. Pancras Workhouse Infirmary. Respecting ward No. 11, he emphatically states, “I have been in a good many foul places; but I don’t think I ever in all my life went into any room which stuck so beastly as that!” He gives it as his opinion that such a loathsome, pestiferous den must have accelerated Murphy’s death. He avers that not only was it overcrowded, but the ventilation was bad—so bad, indeed, that “it had such an effect upon me that after I left the ward I was obliged to stop to get fresh air before proceeding, so much was I overpowered by the stench.” Should a case of typhoid fever occur, it would inevitably go from bed to bed! All the wards he entered were foul and offensive, not excepting the room occupied by the nurses.

Mr. R. B. Carter, of Princes-street, Hanover-square, who accompanied Mr. Solly on his disagreeable mission, gives even more painful and disgusting details. The only ventilation was a broken window, through which a stone had been thrown. “I am familiar,” he states, “with the condition of sick wards and workhouse wards at night; but I never smelt anything so bad in any wards in my life. I have been in wards at all hours of the night, and I repeat that I never smelt anything so vile as those of St. Pancras. Speaking as a surgeon, I say that wounds would not heal in these wards, and I should not like to perform an operation there.” And yet the wards had been shut up but barely half an hour! “Tell it not in Gath, utter it not in the streets of Eskalon!” In addition to the horrible revelations adduced, it appears from the evidence of both the medical witness that the mattresses and coverlids were “thin,” and that the former “would be very painful to those lying upon them”—to such a desperate degree had parsimony and inhumanity been carried by the guardians of the poor

The verdict of the coroner’s jury was that the deceased died of consumption; and that his death was accelerated by the unwholesome state of the ward in which he was placed.” According to Dr. Ellis, one medical officer had died of fever, and another was invalided, and had since died through the like cause. As no action was taken against the guardians in either of these cases, it is not likely that the death of a mere costermonger will get them into trouble, or cause them any inconvenience, uneasiness, or remorse. Tis true the man Murphy, according to his wife’s testimony, did not want to go the workhouse. He sought to become an intern patient of the Middlesex Hospital, where he would not be admitted. He wished “to be somewhere free from the trouble of the children,” and the only available asylum that offered was the workhouse ward, where he speedily got forever relieved of the “the trouble of the children,” and the heartlessness of guardians to boot.

Such is London in the nineteenth century, and such is the barbarous mode in which the sick poor are dealt with in our workhouses. Ought the guardians of St. Pancras to escape scot free, under such circumstances? Is there no law to reach their case? Lately, an over-zealous Sabbatarian endeavoured to punish a poor fellow for trying to get a precarious but honest living by selling some articles on a Sunday morning; and, with this object, endeavoured to resuscitate an old Act of Charles II. Is there no law, obsolete or otherwise, that can make those derelict guardians smart for their betrayal of the poor, their gross violation of sacred obligations, and their grievous neglect of duty? If there is not, there ought to be. Nevertheless, such will be the just judgment of the public, that they will henceforth be compelled to hang their heads through very shame. We shall await with curiosity and impatience the course which the Poor-law Board will adopt with reference to them and their evil deeds. The death of the poor man Murphy, and the revolting revelations disclosed by eminent medical witnesses, it is to be hoped will quell all opposition to the rapid completion of the proposed new infirmary for St. Pancras, especially after the prompt communication from the Poor-law Board.

FRIGHTFUL MORTALITY IN A WORKHOUSE.³¹

On Wednesday, an important investigation was opened before Dr. Lankester, the coroner for Central Middlesex, on the bodies of no less than seven persons who have died in the infirmary or other parts of the St. Pancras workhouse.

It may naturally be supposed that such an occurrence taking place so rapidly after the case of Michael Murphy, reported in page 6, and arising out of somewhat similar circumstances, created no small amount of excitement, not only amongst the guardians, but the ratepayers who had become cognizant of the proceedings. A considerable number of the former were present, and the inquest room was crowded. Mr. Samuel Solly, the vice-president of the Royal College of Surgeons, and Mr. R. B. Carter were in attendance to give evidence.

The jury was empannelled on the bodies of Jane Harrison, aged fifty-eight, Julia Conder, aged thirty, James Plant, aged fifty eight, Jane Hayes, Mary Brown, Mary Smith, and John Fox. The case of Jane Harrison was first taken.

Fr. James Ellis, medical officer of the infirmary, said the immediate cause of death was congestive apoplexy, but it was accelerated by the overcrowded state of the ward in which she lay and the impure atmosphere.

Mr. Solly was then examined. He deposed to the exceedingly foul condition of the air in the wards he had examined, and agreed with Dr. Ellis as to the death of the woman being in some measure due to the atmosphere she was compelled to breathe.

In the course of the subsequent proceedings it was stated by Mr. Watson, the vice-chairman of the board, that twenty-seven more bedsteads had been ordered to be put up in the infirmary, notwithstanding Dr. Ellis’s report as to its overcrowded condition.

This jury immediately returned the following verdict:—“That the deceased, June Harrison, died from the mortal effects of the effusion of serum into the brain, and that her death was accelerated by the overcrowding and want of ventilation of the ward in which she was placed in the infirmary of St. Pancras workhouse”

Evidence was then given as to the deaths of Julia Conder and James Plant, and in each case it was stated that the impure condition of the wards had hastened the fatal events. One of the guardians, Mr. Chandler, was examined. He said the wards were unfit for any sick person to be placed in. He must say, however, that himself and other guardians felt great difficulty in the matter through the conduct of the Poor law Board, who said that every patient ought not to have less than 850 cubic feet of space, and yet they certified for 205 patients in the infirmary. He contended that Mr. Corbett and Dr. Markham, if they considered that 850 cubic feet ought to be given to every inmate, had not done their duty.

The Coroner said it was certain that the infirmary to its present state was quite unfit for sick people, and steps ought to be taken without delay for removing them, as there was plenty of evidence to show that the infirmary was, in fact, killing them. There was a great wrong somewhere.

The investigation into this and other cases was ultimately adjourned.

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1. Text from MEGAdigital (Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften), MEGA² IV/19, licence CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/); the editorial apparatus of the MEGA is not reproduced. Words in square brackets are missing or damaged in the cuttings and supplied by the MEGA editors. ↩

2. Newspaper not identified; the same text in Clerkenwell News, 2 February 1869, pp. 1-2 and Daily Review, 2 February 1869, pp. 6-7 (MEGAdigital). ↩

3. Newspaper not identified; the same text in Clerkenwell News, 2 February 1869, pp. 1-2 and Daily Review, 2 February 1869, pp. 6-7 (MEGAdigital). ↩

4. Newspaper not identified; the same text appeared in many papers (MEGAdigital). ↩

5. The Daily News, No. 7114, 18 February 1869, p. 2. ↩

6. The Standard, 19 January 1869, p. 6. ↩

7. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 971, 21 March 1869, p. 8. ↩

8. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 970, 14 March 1869, p. 4. ↩

9. The Daily News, No. 7097, 29 January 1869, p. 5. ↩

10. The Daily News, No. 7111, 15 February 1869, pp. 4-5. ↩

11. The Daily News, No. 7170, 24 April 1869, p. 4. ↩

12. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 966, 14 February 1869, p. 6. ↩

13. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 974, 11 April 1869, p. 5. ↩

14. Newspaper not identified; the same text appeared in many papers (MEGAdigital). ↩

15. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 978, 9 May 1869, p. 5. ↩

16. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 979, 16 May 1869, pp. 4-5. ↩

17. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 983, 13 June 1869, p. 1. ↩

18. The Daily News, No. 7105, 8 February 1869, p. 5. ↩

19. The Daily News, No. 7274, 24 August 1869, p. 6. ↩

20. Marked by Marx with a black cross in the margin (MEGAdigital). ↩

21. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 991, 8 August 1869, p. 6. ↩

22. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 991, 8 August 1869, p. 6. ↩

23. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 993, 22 August 1869, p. 7. ↩

24. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 993, 22 August 1869, p. 7. ↩

25. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 997, 19 September 1869, p. 5. ↩

26. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 997, 19 September 1869, p. 5. ↩

27. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 997, 19 September 1869, p. 5. ↩

28. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 993, 22 August 1869, p. 4. ↩

29. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 992, 15 August 1869, p. 4. ↩

30. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 1005, 14 November 1869, p. 4. ↩

31. Reynolds’s Newspaper, No. 1005, 14 November 1869, p. 5. ↩