On Wednesday an inquest was held on the body of Annie Redfern, aged twenty-eight, who was found dead in a cellar at 5, Chicksand Street, Mile End, on the morning of last Sunday. This unfortunate woman was a fruit-seller, and rented the cellar in which she died at 1s. 9d. per week—her only companion being a little boy, aged three years, of whom she was the mother. It appeared from the evidence of the surgeon who was summoned to see the deceased when her body was discovered on Sunday morning that she had been dead some hours before his arrival. Her knees were drawn up and her arms folded in such a position as to show that she died with her child clasped in her arms. The room was very dark, without any ventilation, and was totally unfit for human habitation. The cause of death was effusion of serum into the pericardium, brought on greatly by living in such a wretched dwelling. The coroner said that as there were so many of these wretched dwellings about, he hoped the jurymen who were connected with the vestry would take care to represent the case to the proper authorities, and see that the place was not let as a dwelling again. This remark from the coroner incited a juryman to reply, “Oh, if we were to do that we might empty half the houses in London; there are thousands more like that, and worse.” Some of the jurors objected to the room being condemned; the majority, however, refused to sign the papers unless this was done, and a verdict was returned in accordance with the evidence. It transpired that the body had to be removed to save it from the rats. If the little child who lay clasped in his dead mother’s arms has not been devoured by these animals, he is probably now in the workhouse, and will remain a burden on the ratepayers, who unfortunately have no means of making the landlord of the foul den that destroyed his mother answerable for his support.
I miss, out of the column of the ‘Pall Mall’ for the 1st of this month, one paragraph after this, and proceed to the next but one, which relates to the enlightened notion among English young women, derived from Mr. J. Stuart Mill,—that the “career” of the Madonna is too limited a one, and that modern political economy can provide them, as the ‘Pall Mall’ observes, with “much more lucrative occupations than that of nursing the baby.” But you must know, first, that the Athenians always kept memory of Theseus’ pot of vegetable soup, and of his sacrifice, by procession in spring-time, bearing a rod wreathed with lambs’-wool, and singing an Easter carol, in these words:—
“Fair staff, may the gods grant, by thee, the bringing of figs to us, and buttery cakes, and honey in bulging cups, and the sopping of oil, and wine in flat cups, easy to lift, that thou mayest” (meaning that we may, but not clear which is which,) “get drunk and sleep.”
Which Mr. Stuart Mill and modern political economy have changed into a pretty Christmas carol for English children, lambs for whom the fair staff also brings wine of a certain sort, in flat cups, “that they may get drunk, and sleep.” Here is the next paragraph from the ‘Pall Mall’:—
One of the most fertile causes of excessive infant mortality is the extensive practice in manufacturing districts of insidiously narcotising young children that they may be the more conveniently laid aside when more lucrative occupations present themselves than that of nursing the baby. Hundreds of gallons of opium in various forms are sold weekly in many districts for this purpose. Nor is it likely that the practice will be checked until juries can be induced to take a rather severe view of the suddenly fatal misadventures which this sort of chronic poisoning not unfrequently produces. It appears, however, to be very difficult to persuade them to look upon it as other than a venial offence. An inquest was recently held at Chapel Gate upon the body of an infant who had died from the administration, by its mother, of about twelve times the proper dose of laudanum. The bottle was labelled carefully with a caution that “opium should not be given to children under seven years of age.” In this case five drops of laudanum were given to a baby of eighteen months. The medical evidence was of a quite unmistakable character, and the coroner in summing up read to the jury a definition of manslaughter, and told them that “a lawful act, if dangerous, not attended with such care as would render the probability of danger very small, and resulting in death, would amount to manslaughter at the least. Then in this case they must return a verdict of manslaughter unless they could find any circumstance which would take it out of the rule of law he had laid down to them. It was not in evidence that the mother had used any caution at all in administering the poison.” Nevertheless, the jury returned, after a short interval, the verdict of homicide by misadventure.
“Hush-a-bye, baby, upon the tree top,” my mother used to sing to me: and I remember the dawn of intelligence in which I began to object to the bad rhyme which followed:—“when the wind blows, the cradle will rock.” But the Christmas winds must blow rudely, and warp the waters askance indeed, which rock our English cradles now.
Mendelssohn’s songs without words have been, I believe, lately popular in musical circles. We shall, perhaps, require cradle songs with very few words, and Christmas carols with very sad ones, before long; in fact, it seems to me, we are fast losing our old skill in carolling. There is a different tone in Chaucer’s notion of it (though this carol of his is in spring-time indeed, not at Christmas):—
Then went I forth on my right hand,
Down by a little path I found,
Of Mintës full, and Fennel greene.