DIED Of STARVATION.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1283, 1 October 1886, Page 3

DIED Of STARVATION.

A MOVING TALE. ' “ Tire! and worn out with anxiety” were the words written on a scrap of paper found upon the body of a labourer named Ward, which was discovered on the beach at Island Bay on Monday afternoon (says the Wellington correspondent of the Lyttelton * Times’). Coupled with the condition of the body, and the man’s _ family, it told a heart-rending tale of destitution, ending in a sad, lonely death, such as roost excite the sympathy of everyone in the community. The jury, who sat upon the inquest returned a verdict of “Death from starvation,” and there can be not„doubt about the justness of the. .finding, for the medical testimony proved that the unhappy man had been days without any food whatever. Inquiries I have personally made show that Ward had denied himself food in order that his wife and eight children might have something with which to keep body and soul together. The post mortem examination showed that there was an entire absence of internal fat, indicating that but a very email quantity of nourishment had been partaken of for a long time past, while the intestines contained nothing whatever beyond about an ounce of mucus. Dr Hutchenson stated that the man had died of slow starvation. Ward was a man of rarely sensitive disposition, and his wife, like him, possessed that pride which, thoneh a high virtue under ordinary circumstances, may almost be said to be a vice in the condition in which the family were for some time before the husband’s death. For two months he had been unable to find employment, or to properly feed his family; yet neither husband nor wile allowed even the nearest nsighbeurs to know of their condition, ’'’he man all th'a time did his best to find work of any kind, and had he allowed his condition to be known he would have received abundance of help. But he suffered on heroi--ally, and finally wandered away and laid down npon the sand and died. Such is the sad story of a death that has caused a thiill of almost horror throughout the city. The widow told her tale of sorrow between heavy sobs, and when the note which her husband had last written was handed to her, her grief was nncontrollanle. Poor soul, her’s was a hard lot, rendered indescribably pitiful by this laat gnef, which filled her cup to overflowing. Why the man wrote those words it is difficult to surmise. He did not write them at home, and there is nothing to lead to the supposition that he meditated self-destruction. Possibly he felt that he could not hold out much longer, and wished to leave behind a mute record of the trouble he was too sensitive to give words to while living. Mrs Ward, 1 learn (though it did not cumo out in evidence), had keen cutting up her bedstead for fuel, being unable to purchase the smallest quantity of firing- The verdict returned is one which is uuique in this city, and 1 believe in the colony.