truly sublime. Captain Maury should be
honoured for having thus far led the way to a
pursuit which elevates the mind and ennobles man.

A NEW CHAMBER OF HORRORS.

THE time has now arrived for a new Chamber
of Horrors; a room not veiled under the thin
apologetic title of " A Chamber of Comparative
Physiognomy," but a fearful national apartment,
supported out of the national taxation, and standing
as a national monument of disgrace and
shame. It shall not be filled with the sullen
faces of murderers and regicides; it shall not
be so broad in design that it may exhibit
horrors of all countries; and it shall not be
merely a wax-work holiday show for gaping
rustics. It shall be a Poor-law Museum of men,
women, and children starved to death; it shall
be set up on the waste ground usually devoted
to heroic statues in Parliament-street,
Westminster, and it shall be the standing curse of
the Poor-Law Board, and every poor-law official
throughout the country. The world is too busy,
the newspapers are too universal in their
aspirations, and our statesmen are thinking far too
much of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, to
devote more than a passing glance to these most
awful deaths, unless they are brought before them
in a blunt material shape. The dead man is
hurried away in the parish coffin, the usual curt line
is recorded in the registrar's book, the
paragraph in the newspaper corner is read and
forgotten, and the whole thing is buried in eternal
night. This is not enough; and, for the sake of
those strugglers who are left, we require more.
Per-centages, averages, and all the hocus pocus
of statistics are only mists, fogs, curtains, and
sleeping-draughts, except to the official mind;
but we, the public, require something more
gross—and more palpable. The deaths from
"privation," "deaths from want of breast-
milk," " deaths from neglect," " deaths from
cold"—or, in plain unsavoury words, from
utter starvation—increase every year. They
were 222 (in London only) in 1848, they were
516, within the same area, in 1857, and this,
without questioning how many of the returns
under the head of " fever," ought to be classed
as starvation. Here is a country that spends one
hundred millions sterling a year in government,
and yet allows hundreds of its children, in its
metropolis alone, to be annually starved to death!

The first stone of the New Chamber of
Horrors must be laid at once; its architecture
must be in keeping with its contents; famished
paupers must support its entablature, in the
shape of caryatides, and the death's head must
blossom on every column. The first full-length
model that shall stand in its dark rooms shall be
that of the poor old woman of seventy years of
age, who was found dead at the Marylebone
Workhouse door, on Christmas night, 1860. The
next grim model shall be that of the deaf and
dumb man who was picked up, on the same day,
in the same parish, cold and famished, and who
died in the arms of the workhouse surgeon
during the night. This shall form the basis of
the show in the north transept.

In the south transept a full-length model
shall be placed of the starved navigator who
dropped dead in Manor-street, Clapham, on the
11th of January, 1861, while begging with some
companions. He saved himself from being
classed as a "noisy impostor," but he lost his life.

In the east nave we shall have a full collection.
We shall begin with a model of Thomas
Bates, a melancholy suicide from workhouse
neglect. As every statue will have its story written
under it, we give the newspaper story of poor
Bates—a record doubtless forgotten, although
only written on the 2nd of December, 1860:

"Mr. Humphreys, the coroner for the eastern
division of the county of Middlesex, held an inquest
on Wednesday, at the Black Horse Tavern, Kingsland-
road, upon the body of Thomas Bates, a cabinet-
maker, aged 62, who committed suicide by hanging
himself in a public-house where he lodged. The
evidence of the deceased's daughter and another
witness was to the effect that he complained that he
could not obtain admission to Shoreditch workhouse,
and, in reply to an offer on the part of his daughter
to accompany him there, he said, 'they would bully
the eyes out of her head if she went.' He was very
infirm and not able to work, although he did
sometimes earn 3d. or 4d. a day, and his children, who
were all in poor circumstances, sometimes gave him,
a few halfpence. The deceased said several times
that if he were not admitted into the house he should
destroy himself. Upon the 14th of November he
told the witness that he had applied, but had been
refused admission, but was to have 1s. 6d. a week
and a 4 lb. loaf of bread for three months. The
relieving officer denied that the deceased had applied
for admission into the workhouse. It appeared that
the deceased was an inmate of the house from
October, 1859, to the 4th of August last, during which
time he was in the sick ward suffering from chronic
bronchitis, but on the latter date he was discharged
from the doctor's list as ' relieved.' He was then
called before the Board, who directed him to be
discharged with an allowance of 1s. a week and a 4 lb.
loaf for two weeks. The clerk to the guardians said
the deceased quitted the workhouse voluntarily, but
afterwards qualified that statement by admitting
that the man had not applied to be discharged, and
that the Board had ordered him to leave the house.
Dr. James Clark, surgeon to the Shoreditch
workhouse, who attended him while he was an inmate,
stated that deceased, when discharged by him
'relieved,' on the 4th of August, was not able-bodied,
and was not in a fit condition to leave the house.
After a lengthened inquiry, at which the Board of
Guardians were represented by their solicitor, the
jury returned a verdict that the deceased hung
himself while in an unsound state of mind, through
having been refused admission to the workhouse."

By the side of Thomas Bates we shall place
William Gurr, and tell his story as we find it recorded
in the public journals of December 23rd, 1860:

"On Monday, December 17, an inquest was held
before the coroner, at the Market-house Tavern,
Finsbury-market, Shoreditch, on the body of
William Gurr, aged sixty-seven years, a blacksmith,
who died from starvation. Mary Gurr, of No. 2,
King's Head-court, Long-alley, stated that she was
the widow of the deceased, who had been very
reduced and destitute. On Thursday fortnight he