The Glasgow Chronicle. — 1850-01-09 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

RIGHTFUL CASE OF STARVATION.  The town of Southampton has been thrown into a state of intense excitement by reason of the cruel death,by starvation, of a poor woman, eight months advanced in pregnancy, whose life has been wantonly sacrificed by the inhumanity and neglect of the poor law functionaries. It appears that the dsceased, Elizabeth Briggs, had been in the receipt of one shilling and a loaf weekly, from the Southampton Guardians, which formed the sole means of support for herself and a child two years old. Overtaken by illness, she applied to the doctor for an order into the workhouse; but some trifling irregularity, in reference to date, was sufficient to ensure the rejection of the unhappy woman, though she presented herself in a state of utter exhaustion at the door! The result of the rainfall examination presents a fearful picture of the sufferings to which the poor creature was so heartlessly abandoned; and conveys a much more vivid description than any other language could possibly supply. The following is the principal portion The lungs were perfectly healthy, with an unusually small quantity of blood in them. The heart was unusually small, and appeared to have lost all muscular substance; it was all flaccid and flabby, and the walls of it collapsed on being removed from the chest; the liver was unusually pale, and the stomach appeared almost inflated likes bladder with gas, and contained from three to four ounces of a grumous bloody fluid, with a few crumbs of bread perfectly indigested ; from several points of the stomach, blood had evidently been poured out in some quantity, as the vessels themselves appeared to be ruptured beneath and through the mucous membrane of the stomach. She was eight months in pregnancy, with a fine healthy male child, though very small. He had no doubt whatever from his previous knowledge of the history of the case, and what had since come to his knowledge, that the deceased died from destitution and actual want of food. He should have added that the muscular system, as manifested from removing the skin from the outside of the chest, was quite pulpy; the muscular tissue having appeared to have undergone decomposition. On moderate pressure of the finger and thumb, it broke up and appeared to assume the substance of jelly. Exposure to cold would have greatly aggravated all her symptoms, and produced internal congestion, which was the immediate cause of the discharge of blood from the stomach, and the cause of death. If on Friday night she had received proper attention, life might have been preserved, if the deceased had received proper warmth and nourishment, as broth or soup, and a warm bed." Surely it is high time that some remedy was applied to so anomalous and disgraceful a state of things? The nation that would not suffer Charlotte Harris to be hung for murder, —inasmuch as the life of her babe was bound up in her own,—will not surely tolerate neglect so gross as is manifested in this case, where a helpless female, within one month of her confinement, dies of sheer starvation, being driven like a dog from the asylum where the houseless poor are entitled to accept a refuge? The verdict of the jury ascribed death to " starvation, exposure to cold, and the want of the common necessaries of life ;" and with this associated a strong opinion as to the " greaetuad culpable neglect" of the responsible authorities.