A PITIABLE CASE.

Evening Post, Volume XVIII, Issue 5, 5 July 1879, Page 1 (Supplement)

A PITIABLE CASE.

On Saturday night an incident occurred at the Central Police Station (says the Sydney Mail of 31st May) of a kind that should move all hearts to pity. In a room lighted dimly by a candle which stood on the table, and near by a phial of medicine, and one or two little comf >rts provided, according to the direction of the police surgeon, sat a poor woman nursing her child, a girl of about seven years of ag", who was delirious and dangerously ill with scarlet fever. Both the mother and her child, because the little one was ill with an infectious disease, had been literally turned into the streets, and bat for the shelter afforded at the police station, would have been houseless. The mother's name is Caroline Ogilvie. and with her child Christina, was in service at Petersham. On Thursday last the child was taken ill, and on Friday a doctor prot.ounced the sickness to be scarlet fever. On Saturday morning the mistress of tht, house sent the mother and the child in a cab to the Sydney Infirmary, but the doctors there, notwithstanding that the woman had nowhere to go, and that the poor child was extremely ill, would n<>t admit it into the ins dtution, nor provide accommodation for it in any out-building It ac» ith that fever patients are not admitted there, and apparently there is nowhere but a police station they can go to, notwithstanding the many thousands of pounds annually expended or squandered, both of public and private money, in establishing and maintaining almost every form of almahouae that can be devised . v o the doctors or the Infirmary authorities gave the hjmeless mother and child a few shillings and sent them away in a cab to the Central Police office, and there the kind-hearted sub-inspector and his men made the little patient and her mother as comfortable as circumstances would allow. It c-n easily be understood that, after so much moving about through the street* and from one place to another, the child was in a burning fever, and the mother almost borne down with grief, when they reached the police station. It is not surprising, therefore, that, when tho police surgeon, Dr. Egan, who was quickly sent for, came to see the child he should pronounce the case a very serious one. Plenty of blankets, and afterwards a mattrass were procured, and a bed made for the child on the stone floor, and the mo'her, very grateful for what bad been done, sat by and tended the sufferer. Dr. Egan descibes the child's ailment as the most malignant type of scarlet fever he has seen for many years. The delirium of the fever produced a restlessness on the part of the sufferer that was at times quite distressing to witness ; and all Saturday nigh 1 ; the little patient was delirious, and at times her shrieks and cries are said to have been heartrending. It was really dad to see the two in the station. The room, notwithstanding the kind attention and services of the police officers, was certainly not homelike, and looked very bare ; and, after all, it was but a room at a police station, not many feet away from the cells where thieves and drunkards were confined, and who were, of course, as liable to contract the disease as would have been the inmates of the Infirmary had the patient been admitted there. From the time the mother and child were brought to the station subinspector Anderson had hi 3 men searching over the city trying to find some philanthropic person to take in the houseless unf rtunates, but up to Sunday in vain On Sunday morning Mr. Anderson sent several men to make a house-to-house inquiry to see if they could find some place for the child, and at 11 o'clock one of them found a good Samaritan and a suitable place at the h<use of Mrs Morg-m JoHn-street, Pyrmont, where the child and the mother were taken, with the bedding that had been provided for them. The life, however, that might probably have been spared had public benevolence and charity run in the proper channel to meet such distressing cases, has ceased. The child had been but a few houra under long-sought-for shelter, when " death came with friendly care," and put an end to her sufferings. But the death by no means wipes away the reproach that must attach to a cum uunity whose frfe-handed libe rality is so managed, or mismanaged, that a police sta ion is the only refuge open to the dying and destitute. The child died about ti o'clock on Sun 1»y evening. When a constable wa3 s'-nt over by Inspector Anderson with medicine for the child, he found her a corpse, and the mother in a state of distraction, and in a fair w»y to contract the disease her child had died of, or succumb to the trial she has endured.