ANOTHER VICTIM OF MEDICAL TREATMENT.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CII, Issue 11948, 20 July 1899, Page 4

ANOTHER VICTIM OF MEDICAL TREATMENT.

It is to be hoped that the inquest to be held to-day touching the death of the unfortunate man Jonathan Kay, who expired yesterday shortly after his admission to Lyttelton Gaol for medical treatment, will be of a thoroughly exhaustive nature. It is only a few weeks ago that a similar case, in which Dr Malone was the victim, ocr curred, and the public will certainly want to know why dying men are packed off to Lyttelton without any sort.of attempt to prepare them for the journey. Kay seems to have been treated with even greater harshness than was meted out to Dr Malone. A correspondent who writes to u? this morning declares that the poor fellow was removed from the police depot to the railway station in the rags he was wearing at the time of his arrest, and that he was dumped about during the journey with rather less care than a porter would bestow upon a bale of bags. Our correspondent very pes-tinently asks why prisoners remanded for medical treatment should not be kept in Christchurch. It would surely be possible to give these miserable creatures the attention they require without banishing them to gaol. If there is no accommodation for them at the police depot it is time the culpable negligence of the authorities, was repaired. We are satisfied that the taxpayers of the colony do not want to see economy carried to the length of denying the miserable victims of drink the scanty attention that may be necessary to ■ save them from the fate that has overtaken Jonathan Kay and Dr Malone. The spectacle of an old, ragged man, diseased in mjnd and bodjq being hurried off to gaol and to death by a callous policeman, who cannot take the trouble to cover up his prisoner’s gaping rags, ought be_ enough to rouse any Christian community to a point of indignation at which it would insist upon the abolition of the whole wretched system of treating misfortune as a crime. '