The Birkenhead News and Wirral General Advertiser. — 1884-02-23 (Birkenhead, Merseyside, England)

THE DARK PHASE OF FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.  TO THE EDITOR OP THE BERRENREAD NEWS.  am indebted to a paragraph in one of your editorial columns recently for the above caption, but it needs no words of mine to fill the minds of honest people with horror and hatred of institutions that cloak so much villany under the hypocritical and false title of Friendly Societies. The revelations now being made of the exploits of Mrs. Flannagan and Mrs. Higgins in Liverpool in connection with Friendly Society operations show these institutions in their real character. I am astonished at the cleverness and ingenuity of the men who carry these concerns on. In the face of all the infamy which periodically comes to the surface in their trade, they contrive to ward off the shock, and survive and flourish after the exposure. How they manage this is by the crafty prostitution of e, perverting it to pretend that their jefurirge the very opposite to what they really are. Sick and burial club managers and officers are veritable proficients in the art of " bounce," they boast about their lodges being very wealthy, and yet make their dupes believe they are getting nothing by it, ir hen at the same time every penny of that wealth is forfeited by the rank and file of the members; the leaders who have got the capital in their forfeit trap can promote schemes for the appropriation of it for the aggrandisement of their own families, and have the audacity to pretend they are working in the interests of the whole club. They keep their fellow men in a life-long condition of dependence on their vile institutions for support in sickness and  burial expenses, and wonderful to be told, bamboozle them into the belief that they belong to an "Independent Order." What they save of the poor rates in one way, they doubly increase in other ways. The idea that it would be better for persons of small means to put their money into some savings bank was first raised in my mind on learning that it is a 'common thing for persons in Friendly Societies to say—some women to their husbands and some men to their wives—in unhappy moments, "It would be a good job if thou would die! thou art worth more dead than alive ll " alluding to the £lO or thereabout they would get from the lodge. Horrible enough as the facts are revealed in the case of Mary Ann Cotton, Palmer, the horse-racing surgeon, and others who were brought to trial and punishment for crimes facilitated by Friendly Societies, such cases reveal what is possible, and, probably, is the actual state of things beneath the surface. Mary Ann Cotton, the Auckland poisoner, was a great patron of sick and burial clubs; she had got her sixth victim buried before she was detected; and Palmer, the Rugeley poisoner, had plc his ninth victim buried., and even then was only accidentally detected by the fact thsz Cook's uncle read in a newspaper that Ptilmer's last victim had won a gri aunt of money at Shrewsbury races, ar:.7,. finding that he did not return, the tur...le went to 1 Palmer to make inquiries alien* him, and his suspicion was aroused by thc fact that Cook's \pocket book was not forthcoming. Now, if Palmer had left off his murderous work when he had done no less than eight of his victims to death he might now be living and be called a respectable surgeon, and not a breath of suspicion be stirred against him; and if Mary Ann Cotton had only poisoned five instead of six persons she would have escaped detection. These instances show how far it is possible to go without being found out. Life insurance! What a mockery. How often has what they falsely call by that name insured a violent and premature death for the sake of the wretched money? Death made a matter of bargain and trade. One person has a beneficial interest in smother's death. It is to be hoped there are no more Mary Ann Cottons and Palmeri; in existence undetected, because they did not carry the infamous work of these two quite so far as they did. Well may the Poet Byron say— "lf things were always called by their right name, Casaar himself would be asnamed of fame.'  The only real way to insure the existence of life is to teach living beings what are the conditions necessary to be complied with, and then for persons to live in obedience to those principles which constitute the laws of health.— Yours, dm.,