Mr. Farnall, so well known as the representative of the
Poor- law Board in Lancashire during the cotton famine, is now inves- tigating the management of the union in Bethnal Green. Some of the evidence given is extraordinary. To save money the guardians -employ a pauper porter and pauper nurses, and would employ a pauper master and doctor if they dared. The porter said that he was not permitted to allow any applicants to sit down in the lobby, and a dying woman was kept standing, because, though there was a beach, it was against rules for paupers to sit on it. The master also, it appears, was in the habit of refusing cases of urgent neces- sity until a formal order had been obtained, a proceeding for which he was sharply rebuked by the Commissioner. The evidence, in fact, indicates that the guardians consider the poor as foes, whose death is, on the whole, a benefit to the community. A case is reported this week at Greenwich in which a woman was found dead in the street from hunger alone, there being no disease, but not a particle of fat on the body ;" and not a week passes with- -out some case of death from hanger in London. The simple -cause of this atrocious state of affairs is the conduct of the work- house officials, who, egged on by the petty shopkeepers who pay them, are so brutal and insolent that the starving die quietlyrather than enter the " house."
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