the morning. Now, a considerable fuss was
made concerning this dead pauper and his fate.
Journalists said it was cruel to lock up aged
helpless people and leave them to each other's
tender mercies. The Poor Law Board, ever
watchful, considerate, and kind, instituted an
official inquiry, and every one concerned was
examined and absolved. The master, since
dismissed, was rather complimented than otherwise
by the local press; the pauper witnesses
contradicted each other and themselves, and
made their evidence worthless; and after some
fitful indignation on the part of the public,
discussion, like the poor wretch who occasioned
it, died out and was forgotten.

It had been formally shown that it was a
mistake to suppose the ward was isolated; for
bells, conveniently hung, and of sonorous
ringing powers, were shown to be there only
a fortnight after the sad event. It happened,
however, to the present writer to feel doubtful
concerning this pauper's death, and the
circumstances surrounding it, and to inspect the ward
and examine witnesses for himself, some days
before the official inquiry began. Accompanied
by a friendly guardian and the rector of the
parish, he obtained admission to the workhouse,
and examined the ward and pauper death-bed.
The bells were not then put up, and the condition
of things sworn to at the official inquiry
proved not to exist. After the untoward death,
and its more untoward publicity, efforts were
successfully made to smoothe things over; and
by the time the official inquiry was held, all
the arrangements and everybody concerned were
blamelessly immaculate, except the pauper who
obstinately fell out of bed and died for want of
help. It was the accident of publicity, and
the awkward questions it raised, that made
bells necessary. Visiting committees of
guardians had examined and reported favourably
upon the workhouse arrangements every month,
and every other precaution had been taken to
show that this was one of the many best possible
establishments, produced by the best possible
system in the best possible of official worlds.
The pauper died, questions were asked, and
indignation shown; and lo! bells were affixed,
and any such wickedness as locking up the aged
and infirm without light or fire earnestly and
successfully repudiated.

How many paupers die thus from neglect,
without discovery? Here, for example, the
condition of the poor creatures we have just seen
coughing in the cold—worn-out agricultural
drudges, who seemed to be mutely asking
permission to end their days peacefully and without
pain—absolutely demanded warmth and care.
Their age and infirmities make night-nursing
essential, not merely to their comfort, but to their
life; and to shut them up together through the
long dark hours, without supervision or help, is
to bid them die. Who, knowing anything of
workhouse pauper-nature, its callousness, its
servility, its cruelty, thinks it likely that there
would be any disposition to rouse the master in
case of the illness of a mere " inmate"? " No
use disturbing Mr. Blank when the man's feet
were quite cold, and he was as good as dead;
for Mr. Blank couldn't bring life back again to
a dead man, could he now?" was the reason
given to us at Bethnal-green for not knocking
up the labour-master. And cases are plentiful
in which men and women have died through
the neglect and indifference of the fellow-
paupers entrusted to look after them.

It was a pauper nurse at the Holborn Union
workhouse who, on her own responsibility,
plunged the dying Timothy Daly into a warm
bath on an inclement day in December; and a
pauper nurse who improperly applied fuller's-
earth to his sores. It was a pauper nurse who,
at last, mercifully killed off Richard Gibson, at
the St. Giles's Union, by giving him gin; and
a pauper wardsman who left Robert Scolly to
die unaided, on finding "he could not, or would
not, answer" when asked whether he were
ill. The Poor Law Commissioners, in those
consolidated orders which have been so
carefully framed, and through the non-enforcement
of which so much cruelty and misery
is caused, insist that in large workhouses a
paid porter shall be employed, as they "believe
it to be of a rare occurrence that a pauper can
be safely trusted to exercise the power and
perform the duties of porter;" and this rule
should apply a thousand-fold to all positions
demanding delicacy and care. If pauper nurses
are as thoroughly inefficient as we have seen,
what is to be looked for when there is not even a
pretence of deputing duties to any one pauper
among the rest? The fate of everybody's
business is proverbial; and when, as at the sick
and old men's wards just seen, there are
passages, and stairs, and wards to be traversed
before help can be procured, the fate of an old
creature, suddenly smitten in the night, can
be easily guessed. He would groan, and be
told, surlily, to "make less noise." He would
struggle, perhaps, and then become still—with
the stillness of death—but unless his condition
made him actually disagreeable to the rest, it is
childish to suppose any one in the house would
be roused. On inquiring of the master as
to what would happen if a given case
occurred, the invariable, "Well, it never does
happen, you see—we never have any trouble
of the kind," smoothes over all difficulties.
We are asked to assume that old men of eighty
are never ill until a Union doctor declares
infirmary treatment necessary—that a hard-
worked master is personally fond of being
roused out of bed at night; that Staffordshire
and Cheshire paupers are exceptionally full
of the milk of human kindness, and without
harshness to each other, or sycophancy to
those above them—we are asked to assume any
or all of these highly probable contingencies,
and, in that case, we need have no fear that
the paralytic and infirm are at all likely
to be killed off. But, with the harsh coughs
and death-like looks of the wretches cowering
in the potato-shed still before us, the
elaborate cleanliness and bare neatness of