The Sun.
London, England, 1870-04-25 00:00:00

POLICE ATTENTIONS.

Another case has occurred of an insensible person dying
in the hands' of the police. Sarah Riley was found on
Sunday morning lying on the prvement in Hackney in a
state of stupor. She was carried by the police on a
stretcher to the Bethnal-green police station,
and, according to the evidence at the inquest,
was allowed to remain five hours without any
care being shewn her. She was then seized with a
fit ; a doctor was called in who ordered her instant
removal to the workhouse. She was again placed on a
stretcher, and died before she arrived at the workhouse.
The jury appended to their verdict an expression of their
opinion that on account of the incapacity of the
police to distinguish between intoxication and
disease, every person charged with being drunk and
insensible or drunk and incapable should be
examined by a medical man previous to his
or her incarceration in a police cell. There has been, as
We all know, for many years, a feud between the police
aid insensible people. A constable whenever he sees an
insensible person invariably thinks he smells spirits.
The human log is accordingly without much tenderness
securely strapped on a stretcher and deposited in a dark
cell at the station, there to die or get sober, as
the case may be. Some get sober, and are fined five
shillings, others die and are buried. Coroners and juries
generally make strong remarks in these latter cases, but
nobody ever attends to them, and so we go on drinking,
and dying, and muddling lives away as usual. It seems
almost a pity that for fear we should pay too much atten-
tion to a drunken person we should occasionally kill a sick
one. There can be no doubt in the case of
Sarah Riley that a doctor should have been
called in at once ; and, unless we are mistaken, the
police have orders always to seek medical advice without
delay in cases of insensibility, whether arising from drun-
kenness or not ; but something more than this is required.
Every constable, on joining the force, should, as we have
said before, be properly taught the proper mode of hand-
ling all persons whom their duty compels them to take
charge of. Their mission is to save life and not destroy
it, and a training of this nature would be far more
serviceable to them and the public than any. amount
of drill. It cannot be good for any person who is drunk
or in a fit to be strapped on a stretcher and carried, as is
Often the case, under a broiling sun to the station : long
before the doctor is called in the mischief is done. An
insensible person should be taken most carefully and ten-
derly to the nearest doctor, or institution where a doctor
is to be found, unelss the police station is close at hand.
If it turns out that he is drunk, let him be treated as an
offender when he recovers his senses, but not before. By the
exercise of a very little care and common sense we might
at all events alleviate the last momentt of a few
dying people, spare the feelings of their relatives and
possibly save a few lives. In the case of Sarah Riley, the
jury found that there was no blame attached to the police,
which, if it is true that she was left for five hours without
a doctor being called in, is to say the least a very indul-
gent view to take of the matter.—Pall Mall Gazette.