DIED FROM NATURAL CAUSES.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 29, 25 May 1876, Page 2

DIED FROM NATURAL CAUSES.

So said the jury who had viewed the emaciated remains of Robert Lucldej Saunders, B. A., Oxon. The remains vert those of a clergyman of the Church, o| England, seventy-three years of age. He had never held a benefice, but he hai been a hard-working curate in his time. When his last rector died, poor Saundea was too old for a new place, and tot br ok en -spir ite d to look for one. So lie hired a small back room in a humblf house at Leamington, and hid liirasell there, awaiting the great change of all When everything else he had was gone, or had been taken from him, he retained a miserable • annuity of less than £l7 t year, aiid on that he dragged out life In a letter produced at the inquest, thi old man wrote ; " For several yearslliavi lived on eightpence per day, subsisting on bread and milk, or cheese and cocoa, and never tasting butcher's meat, ale, a spirits !" Yet relatives younger, and, to suppose, stronger, craved a portion of tht old man's little means. Yv hy should he live unless he earned for them or begged. In his dead hands was found a letter demanding help—help out of eightpence per day"! The old man was no courtier; certainly he was no beggar. He cowered feebly in his cold room, and perhap had some pleasant memories to dream ot all the livelong day and weary night,' The snow cam-:-, and the frost, and tlie cutting north-eastern winds, and at lasi the old man sighed and was at rest, and will not be dunned for a portion oMiii eightpence a day any more. Then a jwj looked at the siu'unken figure, and as there was 110 trace of poison or gash of knife; they said '' he died from natural Natural! that an Oxford graduate JS educated gentleman —a clergyman oi*a wealthy church, should die thus in the fashionable tr:wn of Leamington ! Natural, that he could not have his eightpence.a day in psacc—that lie had 110 frienil t'o help or cheer him, or"give him a drink of water in his pain ! We say, he died from causes most unnatural in a Christian country among a wealthy people. Better to be a breaker of stones upon the highway than a friendless clergyman of the Church of England if such a fate can be pronounced by twelve comfortable _ Englishmen, " natural."—" Irish Times." J