Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/673

 6, 1863.] gathered during the day was, that the chief labour of investigating the facts falls upon the coroner, and that scarcely one of the jurors sworn in seemed capable of drawing up a verdict. In important cases the better class tradesmen or the gentry are generally summoned, and a far higher amount of intelligence is thus at the service of the Coroner.

The first case gone into was rather complex. Alexander, a greengrocer, coming home drunk, fell down the stairs and broke his leg. He had been an habitual drunkard, so much so as to compel his wife, a poor crushed creature, to live apart from him, because “he was too poor to keep me,” said the poor woman, crying. “I suppose, if the truth were known,” said the coroner, “it was because he beat and otherwise ill-used you,”—a correction of her own statement to which she gave a tacit consent, but which the poor battered piece of humanity, bundled up in rags, would never have volunteered. The ultimate cause of death in this case was singular. The man being a toper, the shock of the accident, a fracture of the femur, brought on delirium tremens: to subdue this, opium was given by the hospital surgeon by what is termed subcutaneous incision; that is, a puncture was made in the skin, and a small quantity of the drug was injected beneath it, from the effects of which he died narcotized—a diseased kidney perhaps helped this unlooked-for termination of the case, but it nevertheless was an extraordinary example of peculiar idiosyncrasy in the man’s constitution, which could not stand an opiate which would scarcely have injured a healthy child. The primary cause of the death, be it remembered, was drunkenness.

Case No. 2 was that of Henry, a carman. Having been drinking freely, he managed, whilst walking beside his horse, to get his foot under the animal’s hoof; he was thrown, and the wheel of his car passing over his ribs fractured them, and he died from inflammation of the lungs. The verdict here was inflammation of the lungs brought on by an accident whilst in a state of intoxication.

Case No. 3 was that of William, a tailor. In reeling out of the doorway of the Red Lion, where he had been drinking, he slipped, and twisted and broke his leg. A “compound comminuted fracture of the tibia and fibula,” said the youthful house-surgeon, with strict professional accuracy. Amputation was performed, and the man died of delirium tremens. A verdict was drawn up to that effect, and the poor widow, bursting out into tears, sobbed out that she was left perfectly destitute. When death comes to members of the comfortable classes it is bitter enough;—to lose a loved husband, what in the whole world is apparently so overwhelming? Yet what is such a blow to that which falls upon the poor. A working man by some accident is hurried out of life, and the poor widow loses not only the companion of her life, but the bread of herself and helpless little ones. The reader will realise the horrible position of the poor widow; and yet the coroner sees such cases every day, and the poor creatures are left to sink back into that maelström of human suffering styled “the world,” and the sun shines day by day as though life was a bright festival.

St. Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, was our next destination. The hospitals generally furnish those cases for inquest which result from accidental death. In many institutions of this nature an inquest-room is provided in the building itself: but the authorities of St. Mary’s have not done so, and after visiting the dead-house, and inspecting the deceased, a woman and a boy, both evidently Irish by their physiognomy, the coroner and his beadle adjourned to a public-house, where a fresh jury had to be sworn in. After contemplating the face of the dead, it gives the mind a slight shock to have to wend one’s way through the crowd of a tap-room, and to have to sit in an apartment smelling of stale tobacco, and presenting all the disorder of the last night’s debauch. “We shall probably have some trouble here,” said the coroner to me, sotto voce, “as I see the witnesses are mostly Irish.” The deceased, Anne Gardner, was a charwoman, and had died in the hospital from exhaustion following an amputation of the foot. The first witness called was her sister, a gaunt Irishwoman with a face through which the skull seemed to protrude, if we may so speak. The poor woman kept a crooning noise, until called upon to give her evidence as to the cause of accident, which was confused enough to justify the coroner’s anticipations. In answer to the query, if the deceased had told her when in the hospital how the accident happened, she replied, “Her sister had told her that she ‘knocked at the door and it was not opened, ”—that “the blood was all up the stairs, just as though a bullock had been killed.”

The woman knew no more than this, and she kept repeating her tale as though she were throwing valuable light on the matter. The next witness, a short, fat, red-faced, and determined-looking Englishwoman, told her story in a very different manner. She had gone out on Saturday night to buy provisions for the family, leaving deceased, who lodged with her, at home; the deceased having apprised her that she also was going out to get a bottle of gin. When she returned at 12 o’clock at night, having forgotten her key, she was obliged to ring her husband up, and on opening the door he remarked that the stairs were very wet; on getting a light she perceived that they were wet—but with blood, which was traced up to the woman’s room. On knocking, the deceased answered that she knew all about it, and would clean it up before her landlord was down in the morning. With this reply, singularly enough, the woman was satisfied, and went to bed. Having some misgivings, however, she demanded admittance to the room early in the morning, and the woman, apparently from the sound, shuffled to the door on her hands and knees, and opened it. “There was not a thing in the room,” said the witness, “but that was covered with blood.” The bones of her leg, near the ankle-joint, were broken, and through the night she had been bleeding most profusely. As the poor creature was too exhausted by the hæmorrhage to give an account of the accident she had met with, it could only be inferred from the appearances in the house. The door not being opened to her, and fearing to let her landlord know that she was out so late, and, but too