An "East-end Incumbent" sends to the Times a list of
five persons admitted by the Registrar-General to have died of starvation in London during one week. Four were children, but one was a woman of 39, and a sixth, not mentioned yet in the reports, was an -old woman of 63. The writer believes that the deaths were due to parochial harshness, caused by the excessive weight of the rates, which induces the parishes to redace out-door relief to a shilling and a loaf per week. The best immediate remedy for a state of affairs utterly disgraceful to our civilization would be to give the Union doctor power to order the comforts necessary as medicines on his responsibility to the Poor Law Board. Much might, how- ever, be improved if magistrates could be induced to use their ex- -officio right of sitting on these East-end Boards, and so placing some check on the local economies.
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