The Sun.
London, England, 1844-07-08 00:00:00

THE NEW POOR-LAW BILL.

.A frightful case has recently occurred at Beeding,
near Horsham, in Sussex, of accidental poisoning by
eating putrescent meat. Some circumstances of that
case, in connexion with the conduct of the Poor. law
Guardians of the union in which Reeding is situated,
remind us that we have hitherto omitted to notice the
subject-matter of the " Second Report from the
Select Committee on Medical Poor Relief," recently
issued from the Vote and Paper-office. To speak
first, however, of the Beeding affair.—lt seems that
a labouring man, named CHAPMAN, bought of a
farmer, among whose herds and flocks the murrain
had extensively prevailed, the carcass of a cow which
had died a few drys before. CHAPMAN'S object in
buying the carcass was—by his own confession—to
have fed with it the poultry (!) and the pig (! !)
which he reared around his miserable hut in the
neighbourhood. The chickens died. The pig, whether
it met with the same fate, or was slaughtered, was
partly eaten by CHAPMAN and his family. Alarming
symptoms having rapidly supervened, the medical
officer of the union was called in, and found that the
wretched family, the poultry, and the pigs all in-
habited one and the same room, the stench of
which was almost fatal to the medical man and those
who came to aid him. The CHAPMANS were removed
into a tent pitched for them at some little distance
from the but ; the meat was burned and buried; and
every remedial treatment adopted to save the family
from the animal poison they had too clearly
absorbed by eating the infected food on which they
had for some time subsisted. But these attentions
were vain. CHIPMAN and two of his children sunk
under the effects of their deleterious diet ; and a third
child, who laboured under similar symptoms, by the
last accounts was not likely to survive its brethren
and parent. " What renders," says the writer of the
statement, "this extraordinary case more astonishing,
is the fact that the deceased family have been buried,
and no notice forwarded of their deaths to the
coroner, though we are informed that the medical
officer has announced it to the Poor-law Guardians of
the Horsham Union, in which the parish of Beeding
is included."

Of course, we can reason only on the allegations
before us as we. find them in the Hampshire Inde-
pendent. But, assuming them to be true, as we are
hound to do, we should say a most flagrant case of
neglect of duty is established against the functionaries
in question ; and, we are sorry to add, an additional
evidence supplied of the miserably deficient machinery
of our very costly and very clumsy poor-law admi-
nistration. It must not be forgotten that this is by
no means a solitary case of official neglect, in re-
ference to the last sad scenes of a miserable pauper's
existence. We mean neglect of those guarantees
which, so far as solemn and public investigation
into the causes of any individual death can supply
them, the law has scrupulously provided for the pro-
tection of the pauper as well as of the aristocrat,
This case of CHAPMAN and his children has, however,
one redeeming feature in it at least. The succour of
the medical officer of the union was prompt ; his at-
tentions sustained; and his removal of the unhappy
people to a tent at once humane and considerate.
Very different is the impression with which we
rise from a perusal of the evidence attached to the
Second Report of the Select Committee before us.
To this Committee, "appointed to inquire into the
Mode of administering Medical Relief to the Sick
Poor under the Provisions of the Poor-law Amend-
ment Act," had been " referred the petition of Mr.
JOHN B. RYDER, of Sloane-street, Chelsea." The
report itself is sufficiently brief.
" Your Committee have examined several witnesses
respecting the case of Henry Osman, which was brought
under their consideration : the testimony given in evi-
dence is very conflicting. Your Committee are of
opinion that there was irregularity on the part of the
medical officer of the Kensington Union House, in
having removed the said Henry Osman without a
medical certificate in writing, and without having seen
him within twenty-four hours of his removal ; but your
Committee are not prepared to say that the Poor-law
Commissioners exercised an unsound discretion in not
making further inquiry into the case of Henry Osman."
Now the case of HENRY OSMAN is very clearly
stated by Mr. RYDER himself, in answer to the
desire of the Conimittee that he should describe it to
them:—
" I felt it my duty, in the month of July last, to lay a
complaint before the Poor-law Commissioners, in whose
province I suppose grievances of this kind peculiarly
come, and whose duty it is to investigate complaints ;
and the complaint is this: that on the 14th of July last
year, a pauper, named Henry Osman, aged 56 years,
was removed in the most. hopeless and helpless state
from the Kensington to the Chelsea Workhouse; in fact,
when he arrived at the Chelsea Workhouse he was in an
absolutely dying condition ; and there was no medical
certificate granted as to the fitness and safety for his
removal, which, I submit to the Committee, ought to
have been the case, and which, I think, the Commis-
sioners themselves cannot for a moment deny the pro-
priety of, and, in fact, the absolute necessity of. As a
proof that he was in this extreme state of sickness—in
this dying state—he died the following morning, very
early, i. e. about five o'clock, of inflammation of the
lungs, which I am sure I need not tell the Committee, is
a complaint above all others requiring the nicest and
tenderest care before they remove a man."
The evidence of Mr. J. B. GUAZZARONI, the
medical officer of the Kensington Union, whose
conduct has been impugned, we confess by no means
removes the unfavourable impression which we, on
the first public notice of OSMAN'S case, conceived of
it. By his own showing he does not appear to have
considered the man to be in at all so dangerous or
exhausted a condition as other witnesses (examined),
and as the officers of the Chelsea Union evidently
did at the time of the pauper's removal. Ilis
evidence appears to us characterised by a sort of in-
difference to the suffering of a patient, amounting to
absolute flippancy ; and there is a tone of nonchalance
in his answers to questions relative to the general
course of pauper treatment in the Kensington Union,
which is in singular bad taste. He is too pro-
foundly professional to know anything on any subject
not within his own immediate duties ; and he thinks
it sufficient reply to an imputation on the manage-
ment of the one workhouse in allowing a pauper to be
removed thence to another workhouse in a filthy con-
dition, that the man had had a bath at the former—
when he first went in.
" It has been stated that when he arrived at the
Chelsea Workhouse his person was in a very filthy
state ?—I have no reason to believe that it was so.
" Is great care taken of their personal cleanliness in
the Kensington Workhouse ?—Yes ; on their admission
they always have a bath."
But from the evidence of the Relieving-officer of the
Kensington Union, it is clear that Mr. GUAZZARONI
was guilty of a positive neglect of duty in not giving
a written order or certificate for OSMAN'S removal.
" When the medical officer gives his certificate to the
effect that the recipient may be removed with care, after
his naming the conveyance in which he should be re-
moved, I do not think it necessary that the medical
officer should be immediately present at the time, if he
gives a written statement to that effect.
" But upon this occasion he did not give a written
statement ?—No, he did not."
The surgeon of the Union-house at Chelsea dis-
tinctly deposes to having found OSMAN in almost an
hour after his reception into that house in a dying
state—rapidly sinking. The master of this house
remonstrated with the men who brought him from
Kensington on the impropriety of removing him in
such a state as he was, before he assisted to help him
out of the cart. The female nurse (MARGARET DA-
VIDSON) deposes to the fact that she and others put
OSMAN to bed immediately, because they thought
him in a dying state; and she deposes likewise to the
filthy condition of his person and his clothes; the
latter of which were obliged to be immediately de-
stroyed. The evidence of the male nurse (JAMES
NEWTON) is still more stringent and precise to the
dying condition of the man when taken out of the
cart. Mr. RYDER, the Chairman of the Board of
Guardians at Chelsea, brought this case before the
Poor-law Commissioners, struck by the entry on the
admission-book of the workhouse, that the man had
been removed in a dying state. hie complains,
naturally enough we think, that the Poor-law Com-
missioners—

" Instead of instituting what I, with great submission,
say they ought to have done, an investigation into this
case—instead of a public inquiry, which was what I
asked for, • and which would have satisfied all parties
(and I think there was nothing unreasonable in my
asking for a public inquiry, and being satisfied with
nothing less), they get from the Kensington Union—
from the very parties themselves, whom I charge as
being implicated in the removal—a report with which
they allow themselves to be satisfied, and decline to
grant any.further inquiry. If this inquiry had been
granted,. Lbave every reason to believe, and I am pre-
pared to swear it, flat a great deal of public good would
have'srisen Iroin that inquiry ; public good in this way,
that it would, have prevented, I have no doubt, by the
which would have been given to it, other
similar instances of what I term gross cruelty to the
door, in remoying them during their dying or their- sick
moments. There have occurred since this cue three or