The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1879-06-13
An Explanation Of the Newark Fatality

NJ hABionattVh W. tuC NCWUIn
A special correspondent of the Troy
Times, who has visited the scene of the
so-callcd poisoning" horror in New
ark, thus describes the surroundings
and the cause of the terribly fatal illness
there:
Soon after the opening of the Sum-
mer term of school in the so-callcd Che
ney district, near the, celebrated Coe
single factory, the virulent diphtheria
broke out in the school, and within five
days from the beginning seventeen out
of twenty scholars were violently sick
with the dread disease, and within ten
days eleven of the seventeen taken sick
were dead. The disease swiftly spread
through the families of that district,
sweeping into adjacent neighborhoods,
sending confusion and CONSERVATION as
victim after victim, both of children
and adults, was suddenly stricken
down and found to be either in dam
gerous or dying condition within few
hours after being exposed to the dire
malady. Sometimes the patient would
shortly turn purple and black and die
before the physician could reach the
bedside, and the "body would become
putrid before it was cold" Others be-
sides thcl first eleven have died, and
still others are in a critical condition
Nor is the plague yet fully stayed
though 1t is not spreading ms fast and
destroying as terribly as at the first
But the pail of death has brought dis.
may to many homes and despair to
many hearts, while the voice of lamen.
tation is heard in Newark-mothcrs
weeping for their children, refusing to
be comforted because they are not"
| THE CRIMINAL CAUSE
For this wholesale slaughter of tile in.
noccnt children is to be found in the san.
itary condition of the children and tho
barbarous circumstances and surround.
ings of the school building. The old
tumble-down school house stands in q
lonesome, out of the way place, OH the
lower side of the road running at the
base of a steep, high hill, and on the
shadowy side, where the sunshine is
seen bnt few brief hours. and so low
| sunk in the soft soil that in the Spring
| time and sudden showers the water
runs over the threshold, partly across
the school house floor, and drains
through wide cracks in the floor to SET
tie in pools and stink and breed sickness
and death, as il has done, among the
lnnoccnts incarceratcd within the slank
mouldy, death-lealing, pent-up walls.
This notorious institution of learning
for the children of virtuous Vermont
in this dark valley of death, stands on
the edge of a swampy or marshy ground
of the quality of a qnagmire, as mala-
rial, If not as musical, as q steaming
nj 4
shOwer-a place unfit for shcltering
| fine wool shecp-too unhealthy for feed
ing fattening swine. And TO cap the
climax of the fitness of things, as if to
show the culture of the building COM
mittee, the water closet stands on high
posts, with no vaults or walls, all above
ground, and within few feet of the
front door, as if to add to the sweet
smelling savors that daily smothered
and sickened seventeen out of twenty
children smut up in this abominaJle
aceldama. Near by the building in the
rear creeps sluggish stream, from
which the children get their drinking
water during the school day, while OH
the banks of this mud creek, since
death has held such high carnival, ii has
been discovered that
TIE BODY OF 4 DEAD HORSE
Was buried last Summer so shallow and
so near the water that the poison from
the decaying carcass is continually
passing into the brook Just above the
place where the children get their
drink. And last of all, as if to inocu-
late the innocent seventeen, three chi
dreh of filthy family went TO school
the first day wearing uncleanscd the
clothes they had worn during weeks OF
wallowing in the diphtheIia, from
which foul disease these three children
had but recently recovered. But wheth-
er the seventeen so suddenly taken sick
first caught the contagion from contact
with diphtheric clothing or inhaled it
from virulent vapors, one thing is
plain-the sanitary condition of the
school house and of the children in its
poisonous surroundings predisposed
them to take this dread disease in its
most violent forms, and hence the fear.
full fatality in this dcsolated neighbour
hood of Newark. TO sanitary igno-
rance and gross neglect of the laws OF
health and life must be attributed this
sad calamity to so many innocent chill
| drcn.