The Sun.
London, England, 1869-11-13 00:00:00

LONDON, SATURDAY, NOV. 13, 1869.

SOME very painful cases have lately been investi-
gated by the coroner for Middlesex, which should
direct public attention to a much-needed social reform.
The treatment of our sick poor in the parish infirmaries
reflects little credit either on our national humanity
or our administrative capacity. There are plenty of
funds at. command, as the overburdened ratepayers
can testify, and there is certainly no wish among the
several classes of the community that those who are
unfortunate enough to depend on public charity
in case of illness should be harshly treated
or suffer from neglect. When some excep-
tionally painful cases came before the public a
few years since, there was a general outcry, and
the course of the investigations that were held was
followed with the deepest interest. Whatever may
be thought of the able-bodied pauper whose own in-
temperance or improvidence has brought him to the
workhouse gates, no blame can attach to the sufferer
whose earnings in health have not enabled him to
lay by sufficient to provide for a tedious illness.
Those earnings are stopped while his expenses are
increased, and the infirmary offers his only hope of
obtaining that rest, nourishment, and medicine
which give him a chance of life. So, at least,
it seems in theory; but the practice is
too often very different. Then there is the large
class of chronic and hopeless cases for which our
Hospitals for Incurables are unhappily totally inade-
quate to provide. It is not, perhaps, generally known
that one person in every twelve dies in a workhouse ;
so that the treatment of the sick poor is a matter of
very wide interest. By far the larger number of these
deaths arise from lingering diseases, especially from
paralysis and consumption, which condemn the weary
sufferer to pass weeks, perhaps months, in the sick-
ward of the infirmary, under the tender care of
unpaid, untrained, and indifferent pauper nurses.

What those wards are in
we may learn from the evidence given
before Dr. LANKESTER respecting the death of
MICHAEL MURPHY, who recently died in St. Pancras
Workhouse Infirmary. The man was admitted to
the House in the last stage of consumption, and
expired the next day, his death, according to the
verdict, "being accelerated by the unwholesome
atmosphere of the ward in which he was placed." Mr.
SAMUEL SOLLY, President of the Royal College of
Surgeons, and senior surgeon of St. Thomas's Hospi-
tal, visited the infirmary on the evening of the 4th.
His own words will best convey his impressions :
" I have been over and through the foulest of
wards in hospitals and other institutions, but I
never, in the whole course of my professional expe-
rience, entered so foul a place. I never experienced
such a stench in all my life arising from foul atmo-
sphere." Remembering what the construction of
our old infirmaries is, we need scarcely be surprised at
this result when we find that 37 persons slept in a
ward which is only 74 feet long, 21 feet wide, and 12
feet high, giving about 520 cubic feet of . air to each
patient, or little more than half the amount required by
the Poor-law Board. At the new St. Thomas's Hospital
the allowance is 1,800 feet to each patient. It is not
wonderful, under these circumstances, that MICHAEL
MURPHY, depressed by long-continued sickness, and
begrudged 'even wholesome air, very speedily suc-
cumbed. But MICHAEL MURPHY is by no means
the only victim to a system which condemns sick
persons to sleep on floors in an atmosphere which
might well be fatal to the healthy. Seven other
deaths are attributed to the same cause. There
seems to be but one opinion as to the state of
the wards. " The ventilation most defective," " the

some cases

"atmosphere frightfully foul," "the wards very
close," "the atmosphere vitiated," "not one of the
wards fit for patients to be in," such are the accounts
given, not by inexperienced visitors, but by physicians
and surgeons. The medical evidence was in every
case unanimous. The patients died from apoplexy,
or from congestion of the brain, produced by foul air
which their diseased -lungs were unable to bear.
One poor man had been sent in by a guar-
dian out of pity for his evident illness. The
Coroner remarked that no doubt he meant kindly,
but the man would have been better outside—an
opinion in which most persons will coincide. Dr.
ELus, the medical officer of the infirmary, said he
had repeatedly complained of the overcrowded
state of the infirmary, and had reported that
95 persons had to lie on the floor ; but the
only change made was that 27 new beds were
ordered. To improve the comforts of these wards,
in which " there is very little room between the
beds," a troop of rats run about and over the
sick people, and the convalescents occasionally
enjoy the excitement of a rat hunt, one man
killing 13. Such visitors, no doubt, contribute to the
quiet of body and mind usually considered indis-
pensable to the recovery of invalids, in the opinion of
the guardians of St. Pancras. The Poor-law Board
has not been free from blame in the matter if, as was
stated at the inquest, they certified for 205 patients
in the infirmary when it was manifestly incapable of
accommodating half that number.
In England we usually wait for some catastrophe
before we make up our minds to carry out
our reforms in earnest, and so the deaths of these
eight victims may serve to save the lives of a good
many others. There are a host of evils in our present
workhouse system which modern legislation has not
yet touched, the two greatest being the employment
of pauper nurses for the sick (only paid by extra
rations and beer) and the want of classification among
the inmates. There is scope enough for our social
reformers within their gloomy walls, but these ques-
tions, pressing as they are, can afford to wait. Unless
something is very speedily done in this matter
of overcrowding, however, we shall have during
the winter months a good many more such
inquests. The evil is not confined to the metropolis,
for workhouses exist all over the country with the