Starvation Rather than the Workhouse.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6714, 29 November 1889, Page 2

Starvation Rather than the Workhouse.

A pathetic instance of the antipathy felt to entering tho workhouse came under the notico of Mr Wynne Baxter when holdiug an inquest on tho body of Sarah Nunn, aged forty-eight, late of 358, Cable street, Shadwell. Her husband, Robert Alfred Nunn, a licensed messenger, who was cnllod as a witness, admitted, under cross-examination, that his average earnings all the year round were under five shillings a week, while half this amount went in rent. There is nothing to be surprised at, therefore, in the fact that hiß wife had not enough to eat, and that it wasthe want of the nourishment, which she did not get, which was mainly 1 responsible for her decease. The husband is a cripple with only one arm, and to sadly handicapped in his efforts to gain a subsistence. The poor fellow quite broke down under the questions put to him, and hiß distress was co manifestly genuine and to be reppected, that both, the jurors and the Coroner shared in the emotion. When he WBS a?ked why he had not applied for parish relief, he anawered, " I have such an antipathy against it, and bo had^the missus : we would rather struggle on." The old man had almost starved himself to provide his wife with the insufficient food she had. So touching was his story that the jury of working-men on the spot subscribed 8a 6d for him. It is Bad — remarks a London contemporary — to think that all our official schemes for relief paBS by the deserving poor, who, only under compulsion, make known the story of their very real woes.