Year: 1869

correspondence BIuafO Courier.


About two years ago correspondent
writing from New York made the statement
that babies were frequently burned out of
the way in an establishment uptown. The
asserti' N was Indignantly cried down by
New York papers and the writer denoun-
ced sensationalist. Probably he was,
but the finding of the calcined skeletons of
three infaIt Is In the chimney ofa house in
Twenty-eighth street few days ago is a
striking confirmation of his statement
The coroner has not yet found out how the
skeletons came to be there, or whether the
infants died before they were burned, or
were burned before they died, but the fact
that they were found in the chimney of a
so called respectable house, revives the
query: Are infants habitually disposed of
by fire in New York I? / haven't the
slightest doubt that a great many are.


do not say that infants are cast alive
into d-hot furnaces, but have good rea-
son to believe that scores of illegitimate
children, born at the private lying-in asy-
lums scattered all over New York, are doc
tored to death and then got rid of for good
without the expense of coffins and funerals.
For there cannot be an interment without
a permit from the officer of the Board of
Health, and a permit viii not be given
without satisfactory GER ,icate as to the
cause of death. And it is not always con-
venient for the murderer of an infant to
furnish this. So, to prevent bother and
save expense, first the poor little innocent
is killed in an entirely unobjectioDable
manner-as with laudanum for instance
and then burned up. TIE authorities now
investigating the Twenty-eighth street
mystery could find much more of the same
sort of work by going few blocks further
up-particularly to magnificent mansion
on Fifth avenue. If what people living in
the neighborhood of that mansion say, is
true, its owner and occupants ought to
have been hung great many years ago.


AGRICULTURAL REPORT Commissioner
Capron, of the Agricultural Department,
will lay his report for 1869 before the Pres.
operations of the Department during the
year have been quite successful. The
whole business of distributing common
seeds has been broken up, and since last
winter none have been bought and
sent out except of rare or unusual
kinds Some very fine re
suits have followed the introduction
of foreign cereals. Considerable attention
has been paid to seeds of fibrous and med
icinal plants, and the Commissioner wishes
to continue his reports in this direction
and will ask a small additional appropria-
ton this winter. He has received ovel
1900 volumes during the year for his lib
rary, many of them the works of foreign
governments, and not TO be found or bought
in this country. and is constantly increasing
the value of the Department exchange In
this direction. The edocumentsin connection
with his report are all valued under th,
superintendence of the Commissioner, ant
the business of printing, he says, is discon
tinued, to their own manifest advantage o
the report Congress gave the Bureau las
year S14. 600 for expenses, or within thi
figure. General Caprod will ask abou
| s17, 900 for the coming year, and particu
larry wants a small addition to the fund
for clerical salaries, so that he may pa,
salaries that will command the labor of {
| few first-class men in his department..


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