The Express.
London, England, 1865-01-16 00:00:00

The dog, to We some prints ends,

Went mad, and bit the man ;
and to some exponents of the pauper mind, the mise-
ries of lingering illness and painful death would be
cheerfully undergone, if by that means neaten and
matrons should be punished, guardians arraigned,
and parochial doctors come to grief. On the other
hand, it may be urged that Mr. Bometz's rule of
relieving sick families with a slice of cheese wee
almost literally carried out if DALY% invalid
appetite was, as be insisted, tempted by bacon and
potatoes ; that Mrs. COSSET'S indignant protest
against old women always dying when she was at
meals is re-eehoed in the withholding more sub-
stantial nutriment than tea and bread and butter
from exhausted patients who enter the workhouse
after the regular dinner hour ; and that the ob-
stinacy of the Dotheboys Hall pupil, who was,
according to Mrs. &wens, always choosing to
have fevers that were catching, was not inaptly
represented by poor DALY himself, when his
physical system refused to rally under a low diet,
and his bed sores persisted in becoming larger and
more aggravated despite the zealous amateur treat-
ment of a pauper wardsman and a pauper nurse.
On the 28th of last October the representative of
the medical officer of the Gray's Inn District found
Dotrathislodgingsanffering from a rheumatic fever
of, it is said, three days' standing, and in want " of
" the common necessaries of life, as regarded food
" and nutriment." His bed was wet and dirty, he
had no nurse, he " frequently asked " his doctor
"whether he might have them," i.e. (we are quot-
ing from the evidence of the medical man himself)
" the common necessaries of life," and the land-
lfidy of the house was ordered to give the sick
man nourishment ; but no order was made on the
parish, because the man who had just " frequently
" asked" its officer for food and nutriment had
" expressed a wish not to have them " from
parochial sources. Passing by what Mr. Eas-
iestt quaintly described as " a very singular cir-
" curastanse," we find DALY worse on the second
day, and that his only food had been " a little
" milk and gruel." It was thou decided to place
him in the workhouse, and though it was declared
that he would require stimulants before removal,
none were ordered from the parish, and their pur-
chase and administration were taken for granted
on the cloudy hypothesis that a respectably-dressed
woman appeared to take great interest in DALY.
It should be here mentioned that DALY, the pa-
tient, had on this day an aperient, a eedative,
and a syrup, and that the aperient consisted of
" 10 mine of sulphate of magnesia (Epsom salts),
"and that he had eight doses bathe 24 hours." Thus
we find him well physicked, but unfed, admitted
into the workhouse between three and four on the
afternoon of the 29th, subsequently described by
the doctor as " a very inclement day." He I.
put into a warm bath the same evening, not by
the order of any one in particular, but because a
pauper nurse thought him " by no means clean."
The temperature of this bath there is no means of
ascertaining, for it depended upon the discretion
of a wardsman, since dead, who bad no instrument
to guide him, and who satisfied himself as to its
meeting the requirements of the case by the simple
process of dipping his head into the water. Hot tea
was then given to DALY, broad and butter offered

and declined, and though he
" night," the workhouse doctor
the next day, when he was at owe pot upon • meat
diet, and had for dinner five ounces of mutton,
half a pound of potatoes, and half a pint of beer.
This medical odioer thought the ease a dangerous
one from the very first, through the extreme weak-
ness of the patient; and it seems natural to suppose
that, from the dosing he had undergone, combined
with the lack of nourishment, the removal of his
impoverished frame through the cold streets, and
the climax of the warm bath and continued absti-
nence from food, were in the swegate not with-
-410 their intluenoe on his condition. In plain
Stylish, the man was starting from the time he was
found in want of food and nutriment on the 28th up to
the regular workhouse dinner hour on the 30th
October. The diet prescribed for him seems to
have been from this day generous in the main,
though first one ounce of wine, and afterwards a
daily pint of milk were taken off, singularly enough
about the time when the bed-sores were first dis-
covered. It should be here stated that the medical
book, white, according to the regulations of the
Poor-law Board, should have been regularly kept
by the workhouse doctor, is admitted by that gen-
tleman to be unworthy of credit. It has been
made up by a pauper schoolboy from cards col-
lected from the bed-heads every Monday, and ini-
tialed by the professional man responsible for its
accuracy " without comparing the entry in the
" book with that on the card." This initialing
has been occasionally deterred for • considerable
time after the entries have been made, and the docu-
mentary evidence sato the food supplied to DALY rests
upon a book in which there are suspicious erasures
and interlinestioss, and in which the duly initialed

I
statement as to the date of his being thss visited
is confessedly false. When we find from the
master's evidence that the average cost of a sick
pauper in the Holborn Union, exclusive of coals,
gas, and washing, but inclusive of the extras
ordered by the medical officer, is a fraction over
6s. ON. a week ; and when that medical officer
himself states that individual guardians bare com-
plained to him—" There is • good deal of wise
"consumed, how do you account for that 1" it is
difficult to avoid the suspicion that a desire for
economy may occasionally prompt an undue reduce
tion of diet in its sick wards. DALY'S bed-sores
were first discovered by the wardeman about a
fortnight or three weeks after his admission. The
doctor had not examined him to see whether
they were coming, and was not informed of
their appearanos until that vague period
"three or four days" had elapsed. Meanwhile
the pauper nurse of the ward in which he lay
applied on her own judgment fuller's earth to the
sores--a course of treatment which is said to be
unobjectionable when the patient is otherwise
healthy, but the effect of which on a man whose
condition was unusually depressed is apparently
more than doubtful. Subsequently poultices of
various kinds were ordered by the doctor, who
made no complaint of the delay in acquainting
him of the existenoe of the sores, and who pre-
scribed no disinfectants when the stench arising
from them became offensive, as it speedily did.
From this time Data does not appear to have
rallied. He was unhappy and ill at ease in the
workhouse, and, rightly or wrongly, had so strong
a conviction that be was being badly treated, that
on the 14th Deo. he left the workhouse for a
lodging-house in Union-court, Holborn, where, in
a room since rented by a street mendicant at 2a. 6d.
a week, he was visited by the medical officer of
the Farringdon Dispensary. This gentleman found
the sorer sloughing, and the patient weak and
emaciated, and after employing certain remedies
suggested that it they could afford it DALY should
ha►e wine—if not, • pint or two of ale or stout,
with beef or soli 1 meat if he would eat, and milk
and a little brandy in the event of faintness ooming on.
?'or the next few days DALY isclescribed as battling
well with the disease, but the landlady declared
herself unable to provide the necessary requisites
for a man in hie condition, and it was resolved to
send him to a hospital. A note was written to that
of St. Bartholomew, the Royal Free, and to King's
College, and in each case the answer given was a
request "to call again," with, however, a promise
of a bed et the establishment first named. On the
22nd the then dying man was taken in • cab to
St. Bartholomew's, " because they could not refuse
"to receive a patient in his condition." He was
seen moaning in the square when directions were
given to have him taken in ; and he expired on the
following day, the assigned cause of death being
" exhaustion from bed-sores."

Such is the ease of Tincrruv DALY. We have
omitted many of its so called points. The work-
house beds lengthened after his demise—the con-
gratulations on the one he died on being six feet
long, as if a couple of inches were a sufficient margin
for comfort, between the length of an invalid and
the Rise of his place of rest—the perfect cleanliness
and propriety of the workhouse vouched for by a
Catholic priest of varied experience—the plea of
excessive work advanced in condonation of the neg-
lected medical book—the circumstance of Dames
wife being engaged in service in the City, and he
himself described as a single rain—the conflicting
testimony as to what he really said concerning his
treatment—the suppositions as to his possession of
pecuniary means—are matters which leave the

;bander of the cue unchanged. Without waiting
for official censures or exculpation., let us declare
the miserable details we have waded through and
condensed to male up one more conclusive testi-
mony to the painful uncertainty and shocking irre-
sponsibility attending the administration of our
parochial system. DALY was completely within the
circle of that system, and nevertheless DALY di,cd
for want of careful watching and suitable food.

Owns% Tasowis.)
AUSTRIA.

VIENNA, JAI! 11.

The Austrian government does not consider so.
oeptable the reductions proposed by the Financial
Committee of the Reichsratb. These reductions
were to have been introduced into the war budget.

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