The Sunday tatler and Jersey City express. (Jersey City, N.J.) 1883-1886, 1885-05-31
SUNDAY. MAY 81. 1885
An Inhuman Father.

Hudson County has never had more
pains taking, conscientious and intelligent
public servant than DR.. Charles B. Con-
verse, the County Physician is. We know,
from thorough acquaintance with the
facts of the matters in which he has acted,
that whatever he does in his official capaci-
ty is never faulty, either in motive or IN
Judgment. When, therefore, he concluded
that coroner's inquiry into the sacrifice OF
four lives by the falling of the Colgate
street tenement could serve no public end
except that Of putting few extra dimes
into the pocket of coroner, and that Is
scarcely public end-we were more than
disposed to let the matter rest at that. II
his conclusion was based on the view that
coroners inquests are utterly unnecessary
iuxuries. that never throw any new light
upon problems of death-that discharge no
public function that the police cannot and
do not perform with more intelligence and
thoroughness- is entirely right. The
logical result of such q view would be that
no inquests would be held at all. But then
he occasionally issues precept to coro-
ner to summon jury. A week ago jury
summoned at his instance went through
the farce of taking testimony on the ques-
tion whether q woman had been murdered
by her husband. for two days after it was
shown by the autopsy--and everybody but
the members of that jury knew-that she
had died of natural causes. A conviction
of the general inutility of coroners' inyesti-
cations cannot, therefore, have moved him
to his conclusion as to the serviceableness
of an inquest in the matter of the Colgate
street slaughter, and he must have gone on
the assumption that the deaths were purely
accidental, and that no one was to blame.
If that view determined him the TATTLER is
forced to dissent from it. Baker Anderson
who owned the building knew that, before
long, his home would tumble down about his
ears. Two weeks before his children were
smothered to death in its ruins, he had
been warned of their peril. It was so I'M
minent that he was advised to get his fam
lily out of it. Instead of following the adj
vice Anderson preferred to take the chances
not himself he was not in the house /;
his business kept him at Snake Hill; his
life could not be sacrificed, happen what
might. But he, carelessly, almost heart
lessly, exposed his innocent little children
to the crash. The unfortunate father is
stricken sorely enough by his bereavement
no doubt, but he was eriminally inconsid-
crate of his children's safety, in not leav-
ing the house until 1t had been made secure
against all chance of collapse. There is
something inhumanly selfish in the nature
of the man who can put his family into q
tottering house, and, while he gets out
from under himself, leave them to the
chance of being slaughtered by its fall. A
right feeling man would have taken them
under his arms at the first intimation of
danger, and not have eased his conscience
with guess and hope that the death that
seemed inevitable would not overtake them,
after all. There is responsibility for that
sacrifice of life. 1t may be hard thing to
say just now, in the hour of his affection,
but it is nevertheless true that tho blood
of these children is upon their fathers own
hands. We should not let sympathy for
the man who has bereaved himself by his
own actor what is the same thing by his
own happy-go-lucky inaction-blind us to
the stern realities of the case. The fact that
he was the father of the dead little ones.
only sets in holder relief the heartless
cruelty of baker Anderson's neglect to their
safety.