Punch (71.1876)

THE NEW EDUCATION ACT.

Considerate Landlord. "Are you wanting anything done to your Cottage, Mrs. Grunsle?"

Mrs. Grunsle. "Well, Sir, I was a goin' to arst you if you'd build a little Eoom for our J'mima. The Children do

disturb her so when she 's a studyin' ! ! "

BEDLAMS AND BROKEN BONES.

There is a disease of the bones, consisting in a state of brittleness
known to Surgeons by the name of Fragilitas Ossium, From cases
reported from time to time, this appears to be a malady very
peculiar to Lunatic Asylums. There seems indeed no reason why
people mentally cracked should also be particularly liable to material
fractures ; but so it is. At several inquests held during the last few
years on the bodies of patients who died at institutions for the
insane, it has appeared that more or fewer of their ribs especially
were, on examination after death, found broken. It has also
appeared that during life those patients, when violent, were a good
deal accustomed to be knelt upon by keepers and warders, who also
occasionally struggled hard with them to quiet them. "Whether the
broken ribs were the sequel only or the consequence as well of this
proceeding, Coroners' Juries have generally failed to discover.

According to the Times, an inquiry about a case of this kind took
place a few days ago at Camberwell. Mr. Gr. Hull held an inquest
on the body of Frederick: William Wimberley, a Surgeon, late
inmate of Camberwell House Asylum, where he died. Deceased
was found to have had no less than twenty-one ribs broken, and his
breast-bone too. There was likewise an ulcer of the stomach,
which, on medical evidence, the Jury referred to the same cause as
that which they supposed to have occasioned the broken ribs. Their
verdict was "Death from peritonitis following perforation of the
stomach, and that such death had been accelerated by violence at
the hands of some one in the Asylum, but whether that person was
the attendant Smith or some one else, the evidence failed to show."
Now is not this one of those verdicts that would justify an order for
a new inquest ad melius inquirendum f

Two several witnesses, to be sure, deposed that they had seen the
attendant Smith maltreat the deceased man. One of them said that
in May last he saw Smith throw him down on the grass; when
"the deceased called out as if in pain, and Smith kicked him about
his body several times." Another " saw an attendant named Smith

strike the deceased and kick him on Friday." If this evidence
showed that death was accelerated by violence at the hands of some
one in the Asylum, did it not also show that person to have been the
attendant Smith for one, whether or no there were other persons^
besides, concerned in breaking a breast-bone and twenty-one ribs ?
But the evidence failing to show the person who inflicted the vio-
lence to have been Smith, did it not equally fail to show that any
violence had been inflicted at all P The Camberwell Coroner's Jury
had never perhaps heard of Fragilitas Ossium; but they clearly sat1
on a case of it:—

" Mr. Joseph Lees, of St. Thomas's Hospital, said he examined the body
of the deceased. He came to the conclusion that the ribs were extremely
brittle. There had been fractures and refractures of some of the ribs."

Clearly not in consequence of repeated kicks administered at
intervals during some length of time. The deceased had been accus-
tomed to be kicked and beaten with violence neither by the attendant
Smith, nor any other attendant, or even inmate, of an establishment
where of course humane and competent attendants not only them-
selves abstain, but also restrain violent inmates from assaulting—
to wit, kicking, beating, stamping and kneeling upon anyone.
It may easily be imagined that the unfortunate deceased, like others
similarly afflicted, was subject to fits, always tumbling about,
knocking himself against chairs and tables, and every now and then
breaking a bone or two. Softening of the bones goes together with
softening of the brain. When'next a Coroner investigates a case of
death, connected with fractured ribs, in a madhouse, it may be
hoped that his Jury will not attend to any idle testimony as to
violence supposed to have caused them, and will cautiously confine
their decision to a verdict of Fragilitas Ossium. In the meanwhile,
the attendants of patients likely to be affected with that degenera-
tion, if they do kick, cannot be too careful how they kick them.

A Proverb Fresh from the Country.—No Gooseberry,without
a Thorn.

by Joseph Smith, of No. 30, Loraine Road, Holloway.in the Parish of St. Mary, Islington, in the County of Middlesex, at the Printing Offices of Messrs. Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Lombard
sweet, m the Precmct of Whitefriars, in the City of London, and published by him at No. 85, Fleet Street, in the Parish of St. Bride.City of Lond jn.-SATX'ROiT, August 26,1876.