The Sun. — 1863-06-29 (London, England)

SPECTATOR.—It is right as well as natural that a case like that of the girl worked to death the other day in the employ of Madame Elise should excite a peculiar horror. Men and women die every day of overwork, and the fate of the poor milliner's girl is hardly worse than that of the literary man who, after a life of half-paid exertion, finds, with a growing family, that he is still not doing enough, puts on extra steam, and dies insane from toil, without a misererc from the press over his heart-breaking lot, Yet it is well that the death of Mary Anne Walkley, "aged 20," should excite the greater interest, for her fate, unlike his, touches the inmcst conscience of the rich, rouses the healthy fear which poisons and sometimes restrains the aberrations of luxury, the doubt whether, science notwithstanding, luxurycan be right while so many continue to suffer. She died f m making a dress for the Drawing-room, o and the contrast between the object of the toil and the toil's result, besides being in itself essentially dramatic, appeals to an instinct deeper than the imagination. The man who flogs a slave to death because he disobeys may seem at first sight as bad as the man wh ) murders a slave in order that carp may be fat; but that is a just instinct which holds the second the greater crime, which feels rather than believes that to inflict suffering in order to secure luxury is the most devilish form which contempt for humanity can assume. The details, too, in this case strengthen the natural horror, The poor girl had been forced to work on the Court dress—as much forced, though not as much degraded, as if the whip had been used—for 23 hours, and the inquest revealed a state of things permanently discreditable to the trade. Mr. Isaacson, the proprietor of the establishment—" Madame Elise" being Mrs. Isaacson— has defended himself in a letter as grotesque as any Dickens ever composed, and he admits that for this- e months in the year his "young ladies," as he calls them—for those who most disregard the claims of womanhood are always first to avoid the old healthy word—are worked as hard as human nature can bear. They have 15 hours a day of sedentary occupation, are forbidden for the sake of profit to go out in the day, and for the sake of their morals to take exercise in the evening; sleep four in a room, and two in a bed; and have on the best version of an obscure statement, about one-half the prison allowance of air to breathe. In their workrooms, according to Dr. Lankester, they have less than this, being allowed only 60 feet, which is not a tenth of the proper supply. Mr. Isaacson says he pays well, which, as Madame Elise wants the pick of the trade, is probably true, and that he feeds them on good meat, which there is no especial reason to doubt, though his remark suggests painful ideas as to the practices prevalent in houses with which he is evidently, though silently, comparing his own establishment. Still, making all fair allowances, the broad facts remain that in a milliner's house of the first rank, and employed by the class which goes to drawing-rooms, and making consequently large profits, girls of 20 are kept 16 hours a day at sedentary work, prohibited exercise, ordered to work on occasionally day and night, and compelled to sleep in dormitories so unhealthy that, as one girl said, " we are often ill there," and one girl has died. There is good reason for the indignation which Mr. Isaacson will probably feel not indirectly, through a fine heavier than many a court would venture to inflict, but sympathy, however just or needful, must not hurry the sympathetic out of their sense and prudence. It is possible to remedy part of the grievance complained of, and Lord Shaftesbury has acted with his usual courage in bringing the subject before the Lords, but the remedies to which he points will require not a little discussion.