A BOX ON THE EAR.

Dunstan Times, Issue 803, 7 September 1877, Page 4

A BOX ON THE EAR.

At Manchester, in the beginning of March last, a prisoner was charged with the manslaughter of a girl, fourteen years of age, one of the hands em 'ployed in a mill. The prisoner was overlooker in the mill where the girl was employed, and the mother oi the girl admitted that she had desired him to chastise her daughter if the girl did ■ anything wrong. On the 4th August ■in last year, the overlooker imagined that the girl had disobeyed some of the •regulations of the mill in that she had gone out to get hot water for breakfast. In consequence of this supposition, and, we suppose, in consequence also, of the permission of the mother, he punished the girl b}'hitting her on the side of the head with his hand. At dinner time the poor child complained of a pain in her head, and lay down, unable to eat any dinner. On going home, about six in the evening, she still complained of her head ; about half-past six in the morning she became insensible, and died about a quarter to seven. Several witnesses proved that the blow was nothing more than a “ box on the ear.” The -evidence of medical men showed that death was caused by the rupture of one of the cerebral vessels which might be caused by even a slight blow The jury looked upon upon the case as one of death by misadventure, and the man was discharged, after an expression on the part of the Judge of a hope that other overlookers would not resort to such a mode of chastisement. We have seldom read a more instructive case than that to which we have ■now referred, and we earnestly beg 1 the attention of our readers to it. A box on the ear is one of the most ■ common modes of punishing children when they are subjected at all to coriporal punishment, and it is one to which servants, and we are sorry to say, teachers and parents (who ought to know better) often resort, under the impression that the chastisement inflicted is rather a slight one. The outer ear is, “fortunately, seldom very sensitive. Fortunately it is not so, because a; the pullings and pinch■ings which are inflicted on it in punishment and in teasing, and in the •ear piercing in which savage nations rejoice and which remains with us as a “ survival ” of the habits of uncivi. Used ancestors. Unfortunately, too, it is not sensitive, because it seems to be. imagined that the middle and inner parts of the ear, to which the outer passage leads, are equally insensitive. and so calculated to give little ipaiu when assaulted.