"DEAD FROM NATURAL CAUSES."

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 609, 1 June 1876, Page 3

"DEAD FROM NATURAL CAUSES."

(Irish Times.)

" Dead from Natural Causes !" So said the jury who had viewed the emaciated remains of Robert Luckley Saunders, 8.A., Oxon. The remains were those of a clergyman of the Church of England, seventy-three years of age. He had never held a benefice, but he had been a hard-workirjg curate in his time, When his last rector died, po< r Saunders was too old for a new place, and too broken-spirited to look for one. £o he hired a small back; room in an humb'e houte at Leamington, and hid himself there awaiting the great change of all 1 When everything else he had was gone or had been taken from him, he retained a miserable auuuity of less than £ 17 a year, and on that he dragged out life. In a letter produced at the inquest, the old man wrote—" For several years I have lived on eighip.-nce per day. liubsistiug on bread and milk, or cheese and cocoa, and never tasting butcher's meat, ale, or spirits." Yet relatives younger and, we suppose, stronger, craved a portion of the old man's little means. Why 6hould he live unless he earned for them or begged ? In his dead hands was found a letter demanding help—help out of eightpence a day. The old man was no courtier; certainly he was no beggar. He cowered feebly in his cold room, and perhaps had some pleasant memories to dream of all the live long day and weary night. The snow came, and the frost, and the cutting north-eastern winds, and at last the old man sighed and was at rest, and will not be dunned for a portion of his eightpence a day any more. Then a jury looked at the shrunken figure, and as there was no trace of poison or gash of knife, they said "he died from natural causes !" Natural ! that an Oxford graduate —an educated gentleman —a clergymau of a wealthy church, should die thus in the fashionable town of Leamington ! Natural that he could not have his eightpence a day in peace—that Le had no friend to help or cheer him, or give him a driok of water in his pain ! We eay, he died from causes most unnatural in a Christian country among a wealthy people. Better to be a breaker of stones upon the highway than a friendless clergyman of the Church of England if such a fate can be pronounced by twelve comfortable Englishmen I "natural."