Hard Times

1865.  Sad Death of the Wife of a Navvy.  Mr Todd held an inquest at the Alresford Union-house last Saturday on the body of Sarah Pearce, a young woman 22 years of age, wife of Charles Pearce, a railway labourer, employed on the new line making from Alton to Winchester.  Pearce had been married about a year, and they lived for a time at the Rose and Crown beerhouse at Alresford.  Three weeks ago they went to live in a hut made of bricks and sand close to the site of a railway bridge about to be built at Itchen Stoke.  The hut had no window.  The wife was ill before going there from a severe cold, and soon became worse.  She had the advice of Mr Lipscomb, a surgeon.  She eventually lost the use of her limbs, and was advised to go to the County Hospital.  On Wednesday week the husband got a recommendation from a Scripture reader, and borrowing a horse and cart, drove his wife to Winchester and left her at the Hospital.  She was received and kept there nearly two hours, she was sent away again, on the grounds of her being in a wretched filthy state.  The husband drove the poor creature back again in the open cart to Alresford and got her into the Alresford Union at half-past five at night.  That same night she died.

At the inquest the Hospital, in justification of its actions pointed to its printed statutes.  “No vagrant shall be admitted as a patient”.  “No person shall be admitted as an inpatient without a sufficient change of linen.”  “No person apprehended to be in a dying state, or incurable, shall be suffered to remain”.

The Coroner, after some hand-wringing, gave his verdict, “That deceased died from syncope (slow heart rate) occasioned by the causes and circumstances detailed in the evidence, but not by reason of any wilful neglect or treatment of any person whatsoever”.