The Sun.
London, England, 1844-01-10 00:00:00

them. When the little means which themselves
and others of his friends and neighbours
could spare for his nourishment and
sustentation had become exhausted, his land-
lady sent to the officers of the union, residing at
Ilgrave, to come and see the old man. The mes-
senger returned with an order for the union sur-
geon of the district to attend him. The medical
officer, on visiting him, observed—" Medicine is
of no use,—he must have all the nourish-
ment he can get but he gave no or.
der for any ! On a Friday, four days be-
fore poor WHITE was removed, the landlady,-
a Mrs. GATES, sent to the same surgeon for an
order for nourishment; but—obtained none. The
" relieving officer" (ALEXANDER), who called
also, on that day, declared that he had received
no such order. The assistant overseer told Mrs.
GATES that WHITE ought to be removed to the
union house; but that unless he himselfconsented,
he must not be removed. In answer to an applica-
flop made by both of them at his bedside, the sick
man declared "he would- rather stop another
week ;" and so strong was his aversion to go thi-
ther that one of the two benevolent neighbours
we allude to, and who sate up with him, deposed
that she forbore further to mention the subject,
because of the mental distress it occasioned to
him. On the Monday (the day preceding his
removal), the assistant overseer, BERNARD, told
the landlady (GATES), that if WHITE was still
unwilling to be removed to the union, all his
allowance would be taken off.
(This was-25., and one quartern and a-half of
bread per week :—and he was ninety years old !)
When this communication was made to the old
man, he wept bitterly, and despondingly ex-
claimed, "If I must, I must." GATES told the
assistant overseer, that if they attempted to
remove him, she was sure he would die on the
road; but lie said he should conic for the man
at eleven next morning. That night WHITE was
alternately sensible and delirious; but he put
up his last prayers—doubtless feeling that he
should not survive to repeat them in the union.
The clergyman of the parish, who had visited
him, offered half a sovereign for his relief, " it
he might be allowed to remain in his lodging
another fortnight." How was this Christian-like
charity responded to by the official functionary ?
The assistant overseer said, " If that were done,
the parish would have nothing further to do
with the case." Hereupon the clergyman ad-
vised GATES to interfere no further; but the
overseer, on hearing this from her, on the day of
the removal, asked, " Why had she not taken
the money ?—the man could not live many days."
(Doubtless this tenacity of life, in a chargeable
pauper of ninety years, must appear an
amazing spirit of contumacy to a parochial
" relieving officer !") Had the parish pro-
vided a proper nurse, GATES declared she
would have kept the poor man to the last.
The district surgeon never saw him after
his first visit, till the morning he was re-
moved, when, according to the evidence of the
assistant surgeon at the union, he was in a
condition altogether unfit for so barbarous an
experiment. On the certificate of the former,
however, dated four days previously, and signed
" CORNELIUS BULLER, surgeon," importing
"that JONATHAN WHITE could be safely re-
moved," the removal took place on the 26th."
From the evidence, at the inquest, of
RACHEL BRADFORD, it is clear that WHITE
was in articulo mortis when carried into
the cart. He could swallow but a drop of the
cordial administered to him ; his eyes were
closed, his teeth clenched, and he was speech-
less. The man who drove the cart deposed to
the same extinction of all active functions and
perception, and " did not think him in a state fit
to be removed." The relieving officer deposed,
in opposition to RACHEL BRADFORD, that he
had never received any order " or application"
for nourishment. He admitted, however, that
he inquired of the two women whether the doctor
had ordered him any—that they replied in the
negative ; and that he observed, " should the
doctor order it, the sick man should have it."
Mrs. GATES pressed for a nurse, and ha (ALEX-
ANDER) suggested that the man" should go into
the house, but was informed that lie objected to
do so. On the 26th of December witness re-
ported the case to the board, and applied for a
nurse. The board made an order to remove
WHITE into the house. Witness at the same
time reported that he had seen the doctor, and
that the man was capable of being removed."
We have no hesitation in declaring it to be
our strong conviction, notwithstanding the ver-
dict of wholesale acquittal of all parties con-
cerned, involved in the finding of the Coroner's
inquest, that the gravest blame attaches to the

union surgeon of the district, the assistant over.

seer, the relieving officer, and the board itself.
Under the new poor-law, the board may freely
dispense out-door relief to parties in the condition
of JONATHAN 'WHITE. There was, in this case,
an evident reluctance, even in the last hopeless
extremity of his disease, to exceed, in appor-
tioning relief to this dying man of ninety years,
the miserable pittance of two shillings and a
quartern loaf and a half per week ! The very
medical officer who declared him to be in that
state that medicine could do nothing, that
nourishment was what he wanted, orders no
nourishment, and certifies that his removal, in
that inclement season, may be effected with
safety. The proffered bounty of the clergyman
_ _ _

_ ....
is averted by the menace that its extension shall
be followed by the withdrawal of the starving
pittance of the union ; the dying man's terror
of being taken off to the union house is shame-

fully worked upon by the threat that the only
alternative will be the cutting off from him of

the bounty of his parish. He weeps, he raves,
he remonstrates, he prays, he supplicates ! The
grey hairs of a century are moistened with the
tears of his last anguish. The surgeon, the
officials, are alike inexorable. He is borne, in a
dying state, from the home of his long remote
infancy and the fields of his ancient labours, to
the dreaded portals, which he is carried
through—unresisting, unconscious, helpless—
only to turn upon his face—and die !

A more barbarous and heartless proceeding, as

it seems to us, could not disgrace a Christian
land ! Is it supposed that the poor will long
submit—ought they to submit —to the con-

temptuous, hard-handed, begrudging, revolting
administration of charity decreed by the law,
and provided by the nation, but dishonoured
and poisoned, as it were, in this mode of throw-

ing it to, or forcing it upon, human beings, as if
they were dogs?
Why could not the village labourer of ninety
years have been permitted some little "nourish-

flent," in addition to the disgraceful Pittance

assigned for his weekly wants, in the last hours

of his misery, in the pangs of his last illness ?
Why was he not allowed to die in peace, and

with the consolation—(dear, at all times, to the

hope of rustic age)—of knowing that his bones

should be gathered to the dust of his fathers in
the same churchyard, among whose green knolls
—two centuries before—they, like him, had gam-
bolled in childhood, or meditated in age ? We
have heard Sir ROBERT PEEL eloquent on the

subject of permitting this hope, in all possible

circumstances, to the rural poor—and in his pic-
ture of the pleasure with which they descry the

tower of their village church rearing itself
amidst its clump of ancient trees. Did he ever
look on the church of South Weald, or of
the neighbouring Braintree, answering and ex-
ceeding, in all the beauties of its locality and
accompaniments,—this description built on
a fine eminence, and belted with bold oaks and
towering beeches? If he has once remarked
that interesting object, he may appreciate the
additional affliction which broke the heart of this

old pauper, in the last moments of his con-
sciousness, at the thought of finding a grave be-
tween the dreary walls of a poor-law union-

house, instead of in the churchyard of his native
parish.

By the Clyde Royal Steam Packet ship, we
have received files of Jamaica Papers to the 9th
of December, The proceedings in the House of