The Slaithwaite Guardian and Colne Valley News. — 1904-02-05 (Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, England)

THE GUARDIAN  FRIDAY. FEBRUARY srm, 1901.  As people were proceeding to the various places of worship in Slaithwaite last Sunday night, the streets were in a state of darkness so dense that it could be felt. At least the animated body of a sixteen-stone pedestrian going in an opposite direction could be felt, and it being the Sabbath Day and the destination sacred, the unfortunate wayfarer could do no more, in response to the matterof-fact " Beg pardon," than mutter something about "Want to look where you're going." It is the same story we have had to relate repeatedly before. The moon should hate shone, but it didn't ; and, consequently, the lamps ought to have been lit, but they weren't. And owing to a red-tape system of control °ter public servants, a large percentage of the rate-paying population were placed at great inconvenience and a certain amount of danger. We have previously suggested that discretionary powers should be given the Chairman of the Council, the Chairman of the Highways, or the acting Surveyor, to see that street lamps are lit on such evenings as Sunday night last. It is not so uad on week evenings as on Sunday night. when the shops and public buildings are losed, but even then it is desirable that the matter be remedied as soon as possible. Similar complaints have reached this office from time to time of a similar state of things in other Farts of the Colne Valley, so that it might be taken as a recommendation for all the local authorities.  Precisely what sort of men constituted the Jury which enquired into the death of the young lad at Meltham last Saturday, it is difficult to imagine. They could scarcely be the fathers of boys similar in age to young Crabtree, or they would never have been so utterly regardless of the feelings of his parents or of the lad's state of mind, as to have returned so heartless a verdict as "Feb° de se." We have no sympathy with a person who deliberately and ingeniously plans his own destruction, like the recent case in London: which attracted world-wide attention. If a ‘erclict of  " Feb° de se" were under any circumstances warranted, it was in this case, but the average London juryman has a cringing deference for wealth and social positior, and so a verdict of plain 'Suicide" was returned, and the subject honoured with all the pomp and circumstance of a Christian burial. In the case of Crabtre.e there was every inducement to lead men of ordinary intelligence and average heart to conclude that the lad had, on the impulse of the moment, acting from a sense of shame, remorse, and fear of degradation, put an end to his young life. And all for what? For sixpence! Had the twelve good men and true never been guilty of a youthful delinquency of any sort, and unlike this lad had the fortune not to be found out? Let us hope not, or the cruelty of the verdict would be aggravated. It should be remembered that this boy was but fourteen years of age—the lowest age at which it is possible to pass this verdict—and that by such an act he was liable to be deprived of the ritcs of christian burial, and his parents filled with a sense of shame in addition to the pain of an ordinary bereavement. But to the credit of the local clergy the body was interred with the usual religious service. A coroner's court is a necessary institution, and must of necessity be a source of pain, but it ought not to accentuate the sufferings of deceased's relatives in the way it was done at Meltham. The present system of impannelling jurymen is all wrong. Naturally, the policeman entrusted with the duty seeks to get his men as easily as possible and so he generally goes to a place where men assemble, and there picks his men. When juries are thus constituted, it is hardly likely that their judgment is worth much, and the coroner's duty of summarising the evidence and directing the issue becomes much more difficult,  SLAITUWAITE Four Medals and Eight Diplomas to J. fredala and son, for purity and in bread in erimpetithin: with all the beg bah.. United Kingdom. Catering a speciality.— 1.,. . 1 x 2, Milm.bridgo.—Advt.