Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/120

108 strange and moving spectacle came to pass. The miserable patient was burned to death. Her clothes were reduced to a dark, adhesive crust. In the layers of cinder that marked the front of her dress I noticed two needles that had evidently been stuck there when she ceased her work. Her face was hideously disfigured, the eyes closed, the lips swollen and bladder-like and the cheeks charred in patches to a shiny brown. All her hair was burnt off and was represented by a little greasy ash on the pillow, her eyebrows were streaks of black, while her eyelashes were marked by a line of charcoal at the edge of the lids. She might have been burnt at the stake at Smithfield.

As she was sinking it was necessary that her dying depositions should be taken. For this purpose a magistrate was summoned. With him came two policemen, supporting between them the shaking form of the now partly-sobered husband. The scene was one of the most memorable I have witnessed. I can still see the darkened ward, the whispering patients sitting bolt upright in their nightdresses, the darker corner behind the screen, lit only by the light of a hand lamp, the motionless figure, the tray of dressings no longer needed, the half-emptied feeding-cup. I can recall too the