The Sun.
London, England, 1868-01-27 00:00:00

DESTITUTION AND SUICIDE.

On Saturday afternoon an inquiry wig held at the
Crown Tavern, High-street, Shadwell, bijiltr. John Hum-
phreys, coroner, relative to the suicide of Mary Yems,
aged 30. Charles Yems, 6, Plough-alley, Wapping, de•
posed that he was a general dealer, and that the deceased
was his wife. He last saw her on Monday afternoon. He
had gone to market at eight in the morning, and he had
stayed there till 12 o'clock ; but he had so little money= ,
sd.—and things were so dear, that he could not find
anything cheap enough to buy. He came home, and
when his wife saw he had nothing, she said, " You have
bought nothing !" He said, "My money would not allow
me." She cried, "Oh ! what will become of us ?" and
went away, and he never saw her again. They had gone
through great distress ; they had four children, and for
the kit six months he could not make more than Os.
a week. Out of the 6s. they had to pay ls. Bd. a
week rent and ls. 3d. for the hire of the barrow. They
could not have lived but for two ladies, who were very
good to them. The coroner asked whether they had got
anything from the parish. The witness said he had never
applied. The deceased sometimes asked him to do so, but
he said to her always, " Perhaps there will be better luck
another day." A juror, who knew Yems, stated that all
he said was quite true. The family were very hard-
working and well conducted. Mary Yems, a girl, said
that her mother returned to the house at half-past ten
o'clock on Monday night, and made the bed and suckled
the baby. She asked whether the rent and the barrow-
men were paid. She then said she would go and get
some fancy shirts, and would sit up all night to make
them. She went away and never came back. She used
to work at making slop shirts for a penny a shirt. • For
the better sort of shirts she used to get lid., lid., and
I even 2d. She had to find her own needles and thread.
she could make three or four shirts a day. She used to
work for Mrs. Pickering, of Red Lion-street, Wapping,
I They used to get no meat sometimes for weeks. They
lived on bread and dripping when they could get it. They
I could not get anything when her father had no work. He
was kind to them, and willing to work when he could get
it to do. The youngest child was 18 months old. Witness
I was the eldest. Her mother used often to say to her, " Oh
my, Polly, ain't it dreadful? we have got nothing to eat
i again to-day!" Richard Hamell proved that hefound the
, I body of the deceased in the Thames, near the entrance to
I I the London Docks. She was dressed in clothes that de-
! noted great destitution. The coroner, in summing up, re-
marked that the story, as told by the witnesses, was one
of the saddest of the many ,sad ones he had to hear from
time to time. The life of the poor woman, as she tried to
eke out her husband's scanty earnings by making shirts at
a penny a-piece, finding her own needles and thread, was
such as well might upset her reason, and cause her in a
moment of despair to throw herself into the river. He
was informed that the testimony of the juror as to the
good character and industry of the family was borne out
by that of the district visitor. The jury returned a ver-
dict of " Suicide while in a state of unsound mind through
distress." The man Yems was recalled, and asked 'what
he had had to eat that day. He replied, "We have not
had a bit to eat to-day (it was then half-past two o'clock).
If you go to my placs, you will find it is so." The little
girl was recalled and asked the same question. She said
that she had now been taken by a lady as a servant, and
she had enough to eat, but her sisters had only a bit of
dry bread, and her father had nothing. The coroner and
the jury made up a-small subscription for the family.

A STRANGE AFFAlR.—ThelVaterforcl correspon-
dent of the Freeman's Journal writes that on Friday
morning one of the guns at the fort of Duncannon,
Passage West, near that city, was found "spiked." No
information was procurable on the subject, and he under-
stands that no clue has been found to the " spiker."
THE ILLEGALITY OF LOTTERIES. —A case of im-
portance, as affecting persons engaged in originating
lotteries, was decided by the county magistrates at Can-
terbury on Saturday. The Rev. Henry Geary, inbumbent
of Christ Church, Herne Bay, was summoned by direction
of the chief of the Kent county constabulary, " for that he
did, on the 6th of January last, at Herne Bay, in the
parish of Herne, publicly keep a certain place, there to
exercise and keep open, to be drawn by numbers, a certain
illegal lottery not authorised by Parliament, to wit, a
lottery for divers prizes of goods." The evidence adducd
by several witnesses on behalf of the prosecution went to
shew that a bazaar for the sale of fancy articles was
recently held at Herne Bay, in order to obtain funds to
assist in the cost of enlarging Christ Church. A
number of articles remained undisposed of, and
these the rev. defendant announced would be got rid of by
means of a public lottery, which took place in the school-
room attached to the church. The fee for a single chance
in the drawing was 2s. 6d., and persons who paid that sum
drew from a bag, held by a lad in the building, a ticket
entitling them to a certain article. Some articles were of
greater value than others, none being of less value than
the amount paid, and there were no blanks. Mr. Geary
did not dispute the facts of the ease ; but urged that the
course adopted by him was in every respect similar to pro-
ceedings carried on almost daily throughout the country,
and he had no idea that he was infringing the law. The
bench, through their clerk, said this might be so, but if
proc..T.lings at law were taken in such cases, the parties
concerned would be equally liable t.) conviction. The de-
fendant was then convicted, and directed to come up for
judgment if called upon, and mulct in costs amounting to
£1 4s. 6d.

M
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FATAL PARISU NEGLECT. —An inquest has
been held at the Market House, Poplar, on the
body of Caroline Siddle, aged 45 years, the wife o!
a painter, living at 45, Augusta-street, Poplar. She had
been a healthy woman all her life, but, being seized with a
sudden illness on Tuesday week, an order for the parish
doctor was got the next day. A boy of 18 visited the
deceased and prescribed for her. He saw her again on
the following Saturday : another gentleman saw her on
Sunday, and on Monday she died.—Dr. 11. Stanley
Gale, M. 8., the parish surgeon, said there were
120 parish patients to be visited at their own homes,
and over 400 to treat at his surgery. He had
two assistants, neither legally qualified. The salary
(added the doctor) is £lO5 a year, and the medicine is to be
found out of it. I remonstrated with the board of guar-
dians, but without result. I then wrote to the Poor-law
Board ; and they sent an assistant for a short time.—Dr.
James Edmunds said that the deceased had died from
strangulated hernia. The intestine might easily have been
relieved by an operation, and thus the woman's life saved.
The amount of work cast upon the parish medical officer
was altogether overwhelming, and the £lO5 a year
would not pay for the necessary medic'.ne for 600
patients—a number greater than that of all the sick
in the London Hospital.—Dr. Gale said that' he had
written to the Poor-law Board to say that he was sure
some accident of this kind would happen. The day this
woman died thirty-two fresh orders came in to him.
He would have seen the deceased himself if he had not
been engaged visiting cases which he believed to be more
serious. The stricture was so small that it could hardly be
detected. The jury returned a verdict " That the deceased
died from strangulated hernia, and that her death was
accelerated by the want of properly-qualified medical
attendance ; and that the board of guardians are to blame
in requiring the parish surgeon, Dr. Gale, to attend and
supply medicine to so many more patients than he can
personally see and prescribe for, while they pay him so
1 small a salary that he is not able to employ properly-
qualified assistants to help him."
THE FATAL STORM IN EDINBURGH. For

fully five hours on Friday (says the Scotsman) there
raged over a large part of Scotland, And part of England,
a hurricane of wind, rain, and snow, such as has not been
witnessed for many years ; and the sad effects are written
in grievous loss Of life, in many painful accidents, and in no
small destruction of property. The fall of the barometer
during the previous night and on Friday morning 'gave
warning of some atmospheric change at hand ; the sky
had become by ten o'clock overcast and lowering ;
and by twelve o'clock the tempest had set in. It
grew in fury till about one o'clock, when there oc-
curred in Edinburgh the saddest of all the incident*
of the storm. A tall chimney-stack at the back of the
residence of Mr. John Keegan, S.S.C., in Duke-street,
was blown down, and, tumbling through the roof,
it threw down the whole of the back part of the house, six
storeys in height, burying six inmates in the ruins. It
was found that four persons had been killed. In the
upper part of the house a servant had been killed, and
another severely injured ; further down, Miss Keegan
had been killed ; and of three clerks at work in the
lowest apartment, two were killed, and one narrowly
escaped; and was extricated almost unhurt. Several
other accidents also occurred in Edinburgh, but, fortu-
nately, in none of them were lives lost. Many narrow
escapes, however, took place from falling chimney-
stacks, cans,
and bricks ; and the streets, strewed
with fragments of masonry and loose mortar, made it
appear as if the city had been visited by a siege rather
than a gale of wind. The area of the storm seems to
have been wide, but its fury was doubtless spent in the
southern counties of Scotland. In Glasgow the wind was
very violent, and the roof of a house in Bedford-lane was
blown in about one o'clock, and a woman was killed.
From other quarters also there come reports of accidents,
most of them, however, of small account. It is difficult,
however, to make up the full catalogue of losses, for the
telegraph wires have been damaged, and rail communica-
tion—with the north in particular—has been much im-
peded by trees and telegraph posts falling across the
lines, and also, in the central district, by a heavy snow.
storm. It may be expected that the disasters at sea will
prove to be numerous and serious—indeed, it is known
that four Newhaven fishing-boats and two Dunbar boats
$O. missing.