The Sun. — 1862-12-17 (London, England)

GARDNER'S SISTER AN ALLEGED LUNATIC.  Prisoner said that when she went into the workhouse with her three children they were perfectly healthy. Before long they were infected with a thousand diseases, and removed to the foul ward, where one of them, a girl of eight years of age, died. The other two were still in the ward.  Direr Tyrwhitt said it was very foolish for her to go on in the way she had done, because the children must be cured. Prisoner said that her children were put to sleep in the same bed with other children who were belly diseased, so that there was no chance of their being cured. Mr. Leonard said they were put in the same place as all those with infectious diseases.  Mr. Tyrwhitt said he was not a doctor, but he did not see how a child could be cured if put to sleep and rub against another child labouring under an infectious disease. They might brimstone the child as much as they liked, but he should think with very little effect. It was not to be wondered at that persons in workhouses should complain, and it answered the question asked why prisons were preferred to workhouses, when gaols were so clean and comfortable. Tho prisoner had been proved to have been drunk, and he should commit her for seven days, but as to the children, he should suspend his judgment entirely.  One very pa'nful circumstsnce has resulted from the trial of Gardner, the sweep, who was convicted at the Old Bailey for murder, but whose sentence was recently commuted to penal servitude. The convict has a sister named Susannah Jacobs, whose husband is stated to be in a very good posit ion in life. It appears that the poor woman went to hear her brother's trial, and, as a natural consequence, she felt very much for the terrible position in which he was placed . According to her story, however, there were some who did not fed the matter quite so seriously, for she says that the evening was spent at a Music Hall, notwithstanding her entreaties. At length medical certificates were obtained, and the poor creature found herself removed from a home of comfort and her two little children to the lunatic ward of the Bethnal-green Workhouse. fez only offence appears to have been brooding over the fate of her brother, and a day or two since she was taken to one of the metropolitan police courts, attired in workhouse clothing (despite the alleged means of her husband), to await an examination before the magistrate. During the interval, and although in a place which would naturally associate itself in her mind with the cause of her melancholy, she conversed most lucidly, detailing her harrowed feelings at being taken to a music hall to hear comic singing (a somewhat fearful climax to the episodes of the day) and she complained that they gave her nothing to do at the workhouse. "If," said she, " they would only give me a little sewing I should be all right, but they will not; and so I sit and think, and then I get excited, and then they are sharp to me," There was something inexpressibly touching in the manner in which she begged to be allowed to take a last farewell of her dear children before she was put away; and, looking down at her livery, she asked " Not to be taken back to that place.', The pol;ce magistrate conducted his inquiry in a private room, and he refused to grant any order for Mrs. Jacobs' removal to Colney Hatch, and after this refusal perhaps the Foor Law Board may feel inclined to investigate the matter.  13 x n