Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/538

2, 1860.] and porter: and his supper is to be the same. The butchers say the police buy no bone. The irregularity of their meals prevents their having good joints; and they live on prime steaks and cutlets.

As far as food is concerned, John will do very well. It is good meat, well cooked, and earned and digested by abundant exercise. The air in the house is not so good, as we have seen, and his duty leads him into various unwholesome places. Good food, sleep, and exercise may go a long way in guarding him against this danger: but the hurry and worry are his greatest enemies.

It did surprise him, on first entering his barrack, to observe how many invalids there were on the sick list; and he will see more and more of this every day. It seems strange that of a picked set of young men—the soundest and strongest that could be obtained between twenty and thirty—a larger proportion should be ill than of persons of all ages in many English towns; but the fact is, that 36½ out of every 1000 policemen are always ill, taking the year round. Of these, somewhat less than 4 are under treatment for injuries, to above 32 for sickness.

The married men, who live in homes of their own, are more numerous than the bachelors who live in the section-houses. They probably live in great comfort, as no candidate is admitted who has more than two children. The married men, therefore, are for the most part young husbands, recently settled on good pay. They are under the same medical care as the bachelors; and the doctors find that a smaller proportion of them are ill, and that they are ill for a shorter time. It would be an interesting thing to know whether any number of bachelor policemen marrying after five years’ service, and continuing for another five years after removing to homes of their own, would show an improved state of health before the end of the ten years. If this should be proved, the natural inference would be that the quiet and convenience of a home arranged to suit a man’s work and his rest, with meals cooked by his wife at the most convenient hours, are conducive to health to a very important extent. One can easily imagine, for instance, that night-workers—printers of daily papers, night porters, and policemen—may get better rest by day in a home of their own, with a wife to keep all quiet, than in any barrack where companies of comrades are entering and leaving, and meals and business are always going on. At best, however, the amount of sickness is considerable. Taking the metropolitan force all round, married and single, new men and old hands, each is ill from twelve to thirteen days in the year; ill enough to be in the doctor’s hands, and to have a stoppage of one shilling a day made out of his pay for expenses. Four weeks per year are allowed for sickness on these terms. If a man is likely to get well, he is treated with indulgence after that time: but permission must be obtained from the Secretary of State. If he can never again be fit for service, he must of course be dismissed; but if he has served for five entire years, he has a small gratuity; and if fifteen, he has a pension.

Of the twelve or thirteen days of average illness in the year, less than one day and a half is from injuries received from violence or accident. Some readers may be surprised to hear how few deaths result from what they are apt to consider the special dangers of the police,—from assaults and accidents. These assaults and accidents, together with all diseases whatever except three kinds, caused only 62 deaths in five years, against 155 arising from those three kinds of disease. In the years from 1852 to 1856 (both inclusive) there were 25 deaths from cholera, 41 from fever, and 89 from consumption and other chest diseases. During those years there was not a single death from diarrhœa or dysentery, an evidence of both good diet and temperance on the part of the men. The other heads, at the same time, disclose the real sources of danger. Mothers, wives, and sisters need not be in any great terror of madmen, drunken women, or even brawling Irish, nor of street crushes, runaway horses, and burning or falling houses; but they may have some reasonable dread of the haunts of cholera and the nests of fever which the duty of the police requires them to enter and watch over. Far worse, however, is the disease which might be so easily guarded against—the fatal consumption, which is directly bred of ignorance and carelessness. Too many of the police are as reckless as the soldiers, who die by thousands of night duty. It is not the wet weather that kills them; it is not the winter cold that kills them; but it is the fatal rashness with which they encounter both the one and the other.

The policeman’s two pairs of boots are required to be in good order. He has, as we know, a great coat and waterproof cape, in addition to a good suit of cloth clothing. We know that getting wet does nobody any harm while he keeps in exercise so as to be warm. We know that the bitterest cold is not injurious to a person in exercise, unless he encounters it in either a chilled or a heated condition. The well-clothed policeman, with his fixed time of duty, need never be wet to a hurtful extent, and if he prepares, with any common sense, for going out into the cold, by night or by day, his lungs need take no harm. But this is exactly what is neglected by the men who die of consumption. Their lungs were sound when they entered the force, or the doctor would not have passed them. How is it that they have gone so soon?

One man is lazy about changing his boots and socks when he comes in on a wet day; and he even sits by a great fire with his coat and trousers reeking with damp, instead of putting on the old suit, which should always be at hand for use.

The night-force think they cannot shut up too close at home, when their nights are spent in the open air; so they stop up every chink where they sit and while they sleep, and go out in a state of perspiration to meet the bitter wind at the corners of streets, and probably stand in a draught under a gateway to escape a pelt of rain, which would not do them half as much harm as the wind.

If they were wise, they would keep their