It appears that in Bethnal Green, where people die of
starva- tion at the rate of about two a week, the " guardians of the poor" meet in d board-room lined with flock paper and adorned with gilded cornices, where they sit by blazing fires on handsomely carved chairs, all paid for out of the rates. They may say they need a little comfort to keep them alive amidst the horrors by which they are surrounded, and we may admit the argument ; but then they should diminish those horrors, and not let their officials bathe a poor old man, with an order marked " destitution," as they did this week, in water the temperature of which they did not know, and then give him only gruel which he could barely eat. The man, one R. Scolly, went to bed hungry and cold, and so, having some heart disease, before morning died. The management of the house in this place is said to be good, but it appeared from the evidence given before Mr. Farnall that when- ever an official had anything to do he told a pauper to do it, and did not always superintend him. We shall have to come to paid chairmen at last, and then the Inspector's rebuke will become of some importance.
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