Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1901. STARVATION IN LONDON.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 27 November 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star. AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 27, 1901. STARVATION IN LONDON.

London—the largest and wealthiest city on the earth—is where luxury and magnificence rub shoulders with poverty and want. The rubbing process, unfortunately, does not appear to soften the hearts or loosen the purse strings of the former to the necessities of the latter. The wealthy continue to live luxuriously, and accumulate yet more wealth ; while the poor remain in poverty, want, and distress, every day supplying its quota of man's inhumanity to man in the shape of a human life sacrificed for the want of food. In this colony—in a land of plenty—we have had verdicts returned of "died of starvation," and colonists have stood aghast when the intelligence has been made public. Yet, in spite of the best precautions that can be taken in a scattered population, such sad occurrences will now and

then come to the surface, the victim generally being one of those highlystrung natures that prefer to suffer and to die rather than make known his destitute condition to his fellows. But can it be said of a well-governed and wealthy city, in a country that boasts itself foremost in civilisation, foremost in wealth, and foremost in Christian charity, that there is no means of preventing the death of one life per day from starvation! And yet this is London's record. Some of the British press treat it lightly, and hold it to be no reproach. In 1900, according to a Parliamentary paper, the verdict returned in London on 53 bodies was " Death from starvation ! " And the report with callous indifference remarks thereon " This is about the usual number of such deaths." Fiftythree lives out of a population of 5,000,000, says the Budget, "is certainly not a large proportion, but the very possibility of starvation is repugnant, although the majority of people never think so until the crime of a reviled Anarchist reveals the fact." It seems nevertheless extraordinary that such a number should year by year pass away in such a dreadful manner. It is distinctive evidence of the carelessness of man to his fellow ; an apt illustration of " every man for himself and the devil take the hindermost." If verdicts were recorded in 58 cases of actual starvation how many more deaths have been accelarated by a like cause. And London yearly sends its thousands of missionaries and its tens of thousands of pounds to other lands to convert the heathen, yet leaves its own children to suffer and die of starvation in the streets. Little wonder that outbursts against society are often heard. The man or women who i 3 so elbowed out of the human circle as to be unable to get sufficient food to keep body and soul together has a just right to find fault with out social system, to rebel against it, and go to extremes to secure a remedy.

NOTES AND COMMENTS. i The Health Department seem deter-! mined to keep well ahead of public opinion, and see that due precautions in cases of epidemic are enforced. A Press Association message to-day states that the health officer finds there is a mild epidemic of scarlet fever all over the colony at present. The Department has now far-reaching powers to compel the enforcement of precautions, and will use them should any neglect on the part of the local authorities be brought under notice. It is to be hoped that the Department will continue as't has begun, and will enforce all necessary precautions to ensure as far as possible the health of colonists.