THE DEATH AT GAOL.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VII, Issue 1010, 10 May 1880, Page 2

THE DEATH AT GAOL.

Oatnaru Mail

The case of tho prisoner who died recently in Invercargill Gaol, touching the death of whom an inquest has just been concluded, is a matter that calls for a more searching enquiry than that held by the Coroner. To us at a distance the circumstances surrounding the case appear but little removed from brutal. Here we have a human being for weeks complaining of illhealth and gradually .sinking down to his grave with no other attention paid to him thana cursory examinationbythe medical officer, with the heartless results that the man was declared fit for work and punished because he still complained For a week prior to his death the poor fellow was totally neglected by the doctor whose duty it is to attend upon the sick prisoners, and he died like a dog, unattended and unprovided with any of those remedies which science has so plentifully supplied for the alleviation, if not eradication, of the sufferings to which frail flesh is heir. The bare fact that he was not seen by the gaol surgeon for a week, notwithstanding that he frequently complained of ill-health, is palpable evidence of criminal neglect, either on the part of the gaoler or the surgeon, that should be visited by nothing short of dismissal. That even one of the worst type of the criminal class should die under such circumstances as those which have been recorded by telegraph is a blot upon our boastedcivilisation.andalastinigdisgrace to all concerned. We are aware that many prisoners acquire the ability to so successfully sham illness as to occasionally escape haf d labor and receive delicate attentions from doctors, and we know alao that the majority of prison keepers view with suspicion any plea of illness coming from the lips of a prisoner ; but the fact that deceptions of the kind are frequently practised cannot be put forth as a sufficient plea for the disgraceful neglect that has in the case under review accelerated, if not caused, the death of an erring fellow creature. Judging from the meagre reports of the inquiry that have reached us, the affair seems to have been treated very Hghtly by those most intimately connected with the case. The poor fellow was only a prisoner undergoing punishment for some offence against the laws of his country, and his death under painfully revolting oiroumstanoes does not appear to have caused a pttng of regret and remorse in the breasts of those who trangressed one of the principal humane laws. "Send the lazy dog to work," in effect said the doctor ; " Go to work," said the gaoler ; and to work the dying prisoner went, pleading all the while that some effort might be made to save his life. This is no exaggeration of the facts of one of the most disgraceful and inhuman affairs that has ever been known in the history of New Zealand gaols. Such things might have occurred --and did occur — with impunity in some of the old penal settlements in the neighboring colouiea in years long gone by creating a feeling of abhorrence in the breasts of the people ; frnMW»<«*«o*fta«U fa»a»4od ia fefaia favored colony, that the death of a prisoner under circumstances attended with even less revolting heartlessness fails to arouse a feeling of indignation in the breasts of all charitable people.