The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-09-04
Fs rally Servants.

From The ". Y. World.
While the case of the murderess, Bridget
Durgan, is yet fresh in the public mind, the
warning it had for masters, mistresses, and
servants generally ought not to be mistaken.
The statements of the Irishwoman who was
hanged at New Brunswick last Friday are to
be accepted with good many grains of allow
ance. But, putting them and the explana-
tions of her counsel, Mr.. Adrain, and of the
District Attorney, Mr.. Herbert (both of whom
conversed with her towards the last, upon the
subject) together, we are inclined to think
that her declaration of the motive which
induced her to kill Mrs. Coriell is true. She
had in some way received an impression that
the man and wife by whom she was employed
did not live happily that the wife was irk-
some and unsatisfactory to the man that the
latter had conceived kindness towards her.
Bridget Durgan: and that if Mrs. Coriell was
got rid of she would attain position which
she could not attain while Mrs. Coriell lived.
1t is understood that DR.. Coriell denies that
there was any sufficient ground for such an
impression ; but this denial renders the whole
case more suggestive, in the first place, of how
absolutely people are at the mercy of their
household servants who may get the idea of
doing mischief into their heads and in the
second place of how natural and easy it is for
servants of an evil or deficient temperament
to get such an idea into their heads, under the
usual present system, or, rather, lack of sys-
tenn, OF household management.
The position of a family servant is nearer
to the most sacred interests of a man and his
wife than that of any other person who may
serve either. Both heads of the household
are subject, daily, to the voluntary or invo-
untary criticisms OF the domestics thew en-
nlOV THAR Hannpanpr. cnafcbac of ai
versation together or with their guests; some
inklings of their condolences; their little out
bursts of temper, during which they may drop
incautious and unintentiOnal expressions, are
witnessed and listened to. Many private
arrangements, many secrets are intrusted as
matters of course to hired man or hired
maid, which it would be npleasant-perhaps
extremely mortifying-tO have known outside
the family circle. This is all partially inevi-
table and necessary. The associate evils
which are not necessary are the hap-hazard
engagement of servants whose characters are
unknown, and the injudicious familiarity with
them which is always apt to mislead a COM
paratively ignorant person as to his or her
duty and position, and breed, as in this very
case at Newmarket, absurd and evil aspira-
tions. 1t is continually in proof that persons
acting as servants are prone to take advan-
tage of a slight encouragement to their vanity,
their unframed passions, their indiscreet
ambition.
Charles Reade, in the work which, of all his
ictions, is most painful to read, has shown
that such mistake may have even a more
repulsive sequel than it had in the Newmarket
murder 1t has had frequent evil results all
over the United States. Numerous elope-
ments of young girls with footmen, coachmen,
and gardeners; discoveries of Illicit connec-
tions between married men and their wives
trusted female attendants, and between mar
rled women and their husbands male at
tendants; and, more numerous than all else,
the stories or inuendOes of w-minded do
mestics in regard to the concerns of the
family with which they are or have been con-
nected, have produced, if not in every in
stance crimes and tragedies, at least deal
OF disgraceful private and public scandal.
such warnings are too pertinent not to be
needed at last. The democratic principle cor
rect as a political one, cannot be carried too
far into social relations without danger.
There Is gulf between intelligence and cul-
ture, and incapacity and ignorance, which rem
ders it impossible that any relation except sub
servience by the latter to the authority of the
former can safely subsist between them. A
person who engages as servant to another per-
son is presumably (althOugh this is not
always really SOY the intellectual inferior. At
any rate he OF she occupies the inferior posi-
tion. And lis perfectly right and proper that