"MR. LI MPKINS" 1N BETHNAL GREEN.
ARE there no magistrates in the Tower Hamlets ?—because, if there are, they are very grievously neglecting their duty. Their business at this moment is to earn the "position" of which they are usually so proud, and soil their minds a little by contact with a Board of which they are ex officio members. They can sit, if they please, on the Board of Guardians of Bethnal Green, and they are bound to do it, and, at all events, attempt the task of restraining that egregious body within the limits of justice, humanity, and law. The wisdom of the great unpaid is seldom beyond the reach of cricitism, but there are few Benches in the kingdom capable of scenes such as that reported to have occurred at the weekly meeting of Guardians on Monday night. The result of one or two inquests in which the medical witnesses de- posed to the existence of a disease called " blood poisoning," generated by the sanitary horrors of Bethnal Green, had excited the attention of the press. Reporters, obviously gentlemen with some acquaintance with social science, and some faint idea that poverty is not a crime liable to capital punishment, were sent into the -district, and made three somewhat considerable discoveries. The first was, that the houses over large portions of the district were in the most shocking condition—drains un- trapped, rafters and plaster dropping from the roofs, the rooms -crowded like pigstyes, and the privies, where any existed, undrained and open to public gaze. The second was that a new and frightful form of skin disease was spreading among-the children, condemned by the lciches or overwork of the Inspector of Nuisances to live in one vast pigstye, and the third must be given in the reporter's own words :- "When the doctor receives official notice that he is to attend a woman in her hour of trial, it is by a printed form, filled in with the patient's name. This order' is obtained by the husband, or some friend, by application to the relieving officer, who is himself charged with the duty of ascertaining that the instructions contained in the document are duly carried out. On the back is printed the following very explicit and unmistakeable injunction :—' Notice.—This order being a temporary one, it will only be available until nine o'clock on (such a day) following the -date thereof ; and the medical officer is directed not to attend to the case after that time, unless a fresh order from the relieving officer is presented to him.' The hour invariably prescribed is nine o'clock. If maternal obstinacy, unawed by the terrible idea of offending the parish, happens to prolong the period of labour, by so much as fifteen minutes or even less, and the relations or friends have failed to procure a fresh note from the relieving officer, what is the doctor to do ? If he acts as every humane gentleman in his position must do, the very least he can expect is to bo bullied by the relieving officer, who will probably look in at half-past nine, or thereabout, and will enter the room with as little cere- mony as if it were the bar of a pot-house, and will put a string of deli- cate questions to the woman in no very soothing tone. It may be that the husband has gone to his day's work, believing that, as his wife's trouble has been protracted so far, there will be time for him to get the order renewed in his dinner-hour. This, indeed, is by no means an un- common occurrence. The nine o'clock limitation is a perfect trap for the men who have to seek their livelihood as early as eight or seven. There are those persons who do not forget the brutality of a relieving officer, who, arriving at the scene of a poor creature's labour, under the precise circumstances we have supposed, was met with the doctor's appeal, Yon will grant her another order, of course ?' and who answered, in language that deserves to stand in its naked truculence, with no polite suppression of the strongest syllable, that ho would see her damnedfirst."
We recommend that little paragraph to the wives of Members who warn the nurse six months before she is wanted, and who, though surrounded by friends and comfort, hardly forgive the surgeon who ventures to be absent a second while they are, as they say, in tor- ture. All these statements were suppported by medical evidence, the district "poor-doctor" having, it would seem, some notion that his business was to diminish the mortality of the district, and a theory that a little publicity might help him in that good work. And we may observe, as a rule, that the poor-doctors, though over- work, pauper pay and never-ending worry are apt to render them callous to individual suffering, and though they are too often both impatient and harsh in the midwifery cases in which they are most required, have usually an honest dislike of parochial sanitary neglect, hate slush, despise dirt, protest against evil stenches, and report, when they dare, upon the absence of drains. They do not see sufficiently the use of their own skill, but they do see the value of the pure air, and clear water, and bracing winds, and fresh- smelling earth, which God originally gave even to those of His children who do not pay income-tax.
We never heard of Dr. Moore before in our lives, but on the face of the reports he appears to have done his duty with a zealous moderation pleasant to read of among the accounts of universal official brutality. We say moderation, because Dr. Moore had received one very severe lesson on the meaning of Talleyrand's ,not, " Point de ale, Monsieur, point de ale." He had been Inspector of Nuisances himself, but, as we. said, disliking filth, and having, perhaps, some faint gleams of pity for his fellow-creatures, his reports became so " troublesome " to official imbecility, as represented by the "Board," that he was requested, as over zealous, to resign. Still he retains a vile habit, when he sees children legally murdered, of calling in the coroner to ask in a legal way why they are put to death ; and this obedience to the law irritated his employers beyond all control from prudence, or justice, or common respect for law. They held a special meeting on Monday, and summoned the doctor to answer for his disgraceful humanity. The delinquent appeared, and his entrance was followed by an outburst of petty insult, of cynical contempt for human suffering, such as, in any other country, would have made the Guardians' houses a very inadequate protection against the popular wrath. He was asked at once why he had summoned the coroner to inquire into the death of the child who died of blood poisoning, and why he had not called in another medical man. The unlucky doctor, who, be it observed, had done his bare legal duty, replied to the first question by restating his opinion, and to the second that the body was decomposing, and he had no time to call in a second doctor, and was instantly met by the rejoinder that "he had time to run after the coroner," running after the coroner being, in the opinion of these people, a high crime and misdemeanour. They prefer the undertaker, who covers up all deficiencie;, and asks no questions except about the amount of his bill. After some savage questioning as to his dismissal from his inspector- ship, caused, it appears from the statements of the Board, by his taste for "stink-hunting,"—the highest crime in an Inspector of Nuisances,—a new scene was commenced. Abusing
the doctor, though pleasant palled, so the witnesses at recent inquests were called in to be badgered and bullied, and cross- questioned about the evidence before the coroner. The Board did not, however, obtain much from them, people whose children have just died of " blood poisoning" having an unreasonable prejudice against stenches. The questioning, however, exhibited unmistake- ably the tone in which these well-to-do persons, when invested with authority over a district like Bethnal Green, treat the most ordinary claims of the poor. One member of the Board was accused of giving an applicant for relief the lie. He denied that, but did not deny that he had gone down to the room where the child died, and declared to its fatheit that the place was a beautiful one and the view like Finsbury square I The climax of arrogance— that arrogance which has risen to the height of unconsciousness— was, however, reserved for another member. lie asked,—and as we read it we think instinctively of Dickens' sketch, and ask if his name was "Limpkins,"—" Why the father remained in the place? If he himself found his family's lives endangered, he should think it equal to manslaughter if he did not move." "If the people are hungry," said the French Princess, "why do they not eat buns?" The idea that anybody can be so poor as not to be able to move, to protect himself from the effects of official imbecility by sheer expense, never entered this worthy man's head, and he actually charged the witness's misery upon him as evidence of want of
feeling. The man's child had died of malaria, engendered by parochial neglect, and then the parish officers tell him he himself is the cause of his own grief, because he does not move. Then the regular official stepped forward with the regular official excuse. " Dr. Pierce, medical officer of health, said that many places were worse than Hollybush place. There were only 50 cows in the cow- stied, not 66. The distance from the shed to the houses was 18 yards, not 8. He had directed some alterations to be made. Each person in Hollybush place had 250 feet of air ; children and all." The charges are, that cows are huddled together in Hollybush place till human beings cannot breathe for the stench, and that people die of foul air ; and the conclusive answers are that there were only 50 cows, not 66, and that each person had 250 feet of air. In other words, there were only fifty times as many cows in the place as there ought to have been, and the people had just half the amount of air assigned to convicts, the cottagers' "air," moreover, being a filthy vapour against which any con- vict aware of his privileges would most successfully petition. Finally, the Vice-Chairman, rising to the height of his grand posi- tion, surpassed all meaner members of the Board by assert- ing that Dr. Moore, the only man in the whole set of officials who had attempted to do his duty, had summoned the coroner because he " liked his guineas for inquests." We wonder if the Vice-Chairman likes to be paid for doing his work in life, or if he thinks inhumanity such a luxury that a man may well sacrifice fees in order to enjoy it. If the doctor was paid for calling the coroner so much the better. We only wish pay and duty were always as carefully conjoined, for in that case the Bethnal G uardians would have soon to encounter that poverty which in their hearts they now so utterly despise.
It may be asked what reason the Guardians can have for resent- ing their surgeon's efforts to obtain better air and fewer stenches for the parish they represent. There is no necessity to search for one beyond the instinct of all officials to resent any exposure of their own failures; but, as it happens, they themselves have sup- plied a much more definite motive. A considerable portion of their own body consists of the very men who own these hovels, or their nominees, who draw from them preposterous rents amounting often to thirty per cent., and who have, therefore, the keenest interest in resisting an exposure which must lead to an immediate demand for repairs. Why should an impertinent doctor go about ordering them to spend money on drains, and lose it by taking in fewer tenants, and reject it by refusing all men who make their living by pigs. They feel personally injured by reports so " troublesome " and officious, and will, we doubt not, succeed in expelling the unlucky hygeist, who thinks that when children are poisoned by stenches the coroner's duty begins. We do not know that they are much more to blame than any other people who do injustice rather than part with profit. Some of the greatest land- lords in the country huddle their labourers into styes rather than let them have decent cottages in which they may one " day claim a settlement," and it is hard to blame people like these in Bethnal Green for doing only a little worse than their betters. The true objects of blame are the magistrates, who do not employ their ex ifficio power, and by attending the Board send " respectable holders of cottage property" back to the obscurity from which the prevalence of "pig-scab," " blood plisoning," and such like com- plaints have for the moment dragged them.
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