The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1871-03-04 00:00:00

A. VISIT TO THE PARIS HOSPITALS

FOR CHILDREN

The follostleg futeteM, g extract 1.1 from a letter from a
g2ec'al Correloototont of The Mows :

Anziotl3 to l'Oge of the conditlon of seme cf the
hospi' tals especially those which were in the epiarter
expos.d to fire, and to verify_ the reports as to the
amount of darnare done, I visited the establishment
of Les Enfauts ele .16eus, in which it was reported that
17 children bad been killed in their bees, ard was
glad to find that this was entirely mythical. Twelve
shells fell into the ganlen cud courtyard, hut net •
chitd wan irjared in emy way, their beds havirg hien
removed to cellars and other places of comparative
safety. Ths inoratity in thin e:talt6linsent had, h
ever, exactly doubled during the five inoutLs of the
siege. _ _

lathe Enbins Trouqs the multi were still twee
paiatul. Here again, altherbli eight @tell.] had fallen
into ita ',reciter, no one was it.jured ; but the aliered
criadilions indu.:ed ty the Siege told heavily up.sa it
in various way.%
. . .

Your readers are clitibtless aware that the ol I plan
of placirg the children in a cradle which communicated
directly with the street to longer exisls, and the
m ether who wishes to abandon her Want is °liked to
Ening i; to the office, and do so tonically. Besides
Oda class of infanta are those who are platted M
t y 11110 to who are sick it Is krital cr ether e
tetoper.trlly incapacitated fie m looking after th.m.
13,ta these categories largely iacreased during the
siege. The fun Wien of the establiehmeut being eimply
to receive infer te, and thea pass them instantly on to
the muses provided for them in the country, the
euilden Llecltadie of the city threw an unexpected and
meet scums eilliculty in the way. They found ths.t
it was bole esible either to provide nur,re Cr to rend
the infants to them. As often as it wan pomilde they
prevailed upcn the moth, rs to take themhr ck, offering
them twenty fretted a month to do so. Even with this
tribe the reluctance they manifested to be burdened
with their own children was astonishing, end the
maj, city absolutely refurcd, only 2 per cent. :tempting
The increasing sichnese,bath among men and women,
arising in the former cake ohm from wood., the
prevalence of mall-pox, end contagious fevers, in-
creased largely the number of children whose parents
were unable Is take care of them, atal the consequence
was us degree of overcrowding under conditions which
could nit but be attended with tbe met fatal results.
The had air, the want of naiural nourishment, the
necemity of inveutirg places of safety and of c erryitig
tender infants to and tro--900 were t 'it in the cellars—
all tended to prodece the most frightful amount of
mortality. Strong, healtbydeoking babies pintel away
and did its a week. One of the employes told me it
was touching to watch the little thins, afflicted, ap-
eereutly, with no tlisease, waste gradually away, and
flicker out at Lust for sheer want of oxygen and proper
fool. _ .

I went into a room full of b hiss, none of whom had
been six months is the world, andlound them in the
arms of ehildrim under twelve years of age. There
was nut a wet-nurse in the place. A uicedooking
woman, who had charge of the room, was the only
grown. up p: eon ii ie, in which there were upwards of
Si) leabs. It was the strangest sight to see these rows
of little girls, eseb with a baby and milk milk bottle, each
holding a wizened little Wrap of mortality, swathed like
a ditrioutive nr,ma y, and apparently too weak to do
more than oceasiottoliy give vent to a thin piping sound,
that in ule one feel for the first time in one's his that
• good healthy equal: from any number of them would
have b en a sratefol and cheering noise, but the next
room we t Wend w, e far more pait.ful than this. Here,
seated in a large serni.CrAe round a mild and Buffer-
ine-lioltieg woman who was in charge, was a number
of little children, from two to five years old, silent and
motionless on their little it oil!, the picture of resigns.
Ii . n and diseas One-third had bandages round
their eyes, from oph.Lalinia, and were sitting in
datkne ; others lal their hands teed feet bandaged
up. and were covered with errs. Nearly all ,esuted
solfering from inherited disease of • in tet bore
rible and revolting character, and, gateng at their
ehruken frames already so disfigured and el. !tined
to an much suffering, it semen almost a cruelty
to peeling their existerce. Here, as ;n the room
above, there seemed the same iterapacity for crying;
the stillnese among all there sit k and ruffs ing children
told its own tale. And yet this was net a hotpital ;
it was a place of deposit for new-him
arid healthy children, and this was their condition
after Eve months' siege. The abandoned bedies are
dietinoishal from those which are depoeited by ticket.
pinned upon their breasts.
The mrrtolity from the let of September to the lit
of :Lumley amounted to 960, as against Ib9 of the
previous year. The total number of children dee
popited was 1 362, and of chit iron abandoned 2,071,
making altnge her nearly 3 500 children pla7ed in the
lastitution during the last foot months of last year.

- -
Febmary, last year, a 6—re was discovered in some store
cellars of the plaintiff where sawdust was gored for
the use of the steam-engine lire, to be consumed with
other fuel. Mies Atkinson, with other sasistance ob-
tained, turned the wster on in the hydrants; but it had
re f Ave or pre,anre, and ran out of the 13(ZZ.e "like
water cut f a teapot apout." The result was that the
fire got ahead and burnt down the premiss& The
fire wee suspected to be the work of an incendiary, for
a limp was afterwarde found where the fire originated
which had no right to be there. It was alm alleged
that there was rot sufficient water to supp'y the Coto
potation steam fire engine. The supply of water in-
creased about two o'clock in the day, and at three
&cloak there was a great I treasure of water.
The defendanto' cams was that OH the morning in
question there woe an abundant supply of water in the
reservior which supplied the district in which the
plaintiffs premises were, Co much so, that it was run-
ning over the hack wash into the reeervior beiow it.
This arose partly from there being a good supply
o! water, and partly from there bein4 leas de mual for
manufacturing purposes and steam engine boilers on
the 6unday morning. There was nothiag, therefore,
to account for any deficient pressure so far as the
defend ut company were concerned, and if it existed,
it must have arisen from causes over which they had
no control. It woe suggested, first, that the tire being
supposed to be the woth of come incendiary who WAS
acquainted with the premises, that the same person
who had set the premises on fire I at tampered with the
by,trants to render them ineffective to put out the tire,
and had it :sorted clay or some Fubstance into them to
prevent their due action unti it got waehed away.
This might account for the water in the first instance
running out of the in zee of the bore as described.
Sceently, it was proved that several pluza had
been taken out of the threeinch pipo in different
places ti obtain water, and it wan a well known
fact that each plug token out would reduce
the pres,ure of the water in the p'pe beyoni
it; or. as one of ilia witnesses expreseed it,
"everybody seemed to have gone on the principle that
they would get a better 'tipple of water by opening as
many plugs as they could." Tee inerelsod pressure at
three o'clock was said to have bet n obtained by the
deft ndaws cutting off the supply to Gateithead at
their own risk, and thus taming art the water pretence
on to the plaiuttta district. 13 ,fore this the pressure
was paid to be ample and equal to 150 feet, which was
cc usiderabiy higher than the plaintiff', premises. And
se to the averment that the water sepply was maul.
fount for the Corporation steam fire-tngine, it was
answered that that ,mine supplied four hose with
great force' and used 30,000 gallon. of water an hour,
and would require a seveminch pipe to feed it, and
this supply the company were not bound to give.
The trial of the case extended over three days, and
in the result the jury fined a verdict for the defendants
on the ground that there WAS no contract creating the
olligatit n alleged, and also on the ground that the
want of FutDdent supp'y of water arose from causes
over which the defendants had no control.