PETER ROMULUS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2243, 10 June 1881, Page 3

PETER ROMULUS.

To the Editor of the Globe.

Sir, —In reading in your issue of yesterday your remarks of Peter Romulus, it occurred,to me that yon know not the man of whom you wore speaking. I confess I know very little of his history ; but from what I have seen I will tell you and the public what I know of him. He is a man whom I should judge to be 70 years of age, palsied, and unable to stand erect, and by no means fit for work. I should say he is a subject more fit for charity than a gaol, I have many times seen him picking bits of food from the sida channels of our streets, and eating it most ravenously, as if on the point of starvation. I have never seen him when ho was not apparently looking for food, and I have repeatedly directed attention to him. The last time I saw him I called the attention of those with whom I was standing on the footpath to him, and we bought him a loaf of bread. I have never seen him the worse for drink, or enter the door of a hotel; nor have I ever seen him attempt to beg. As I have said before, I am unacquainted with his history further than that. He had twelve mouths for vagrancy some time since. Sir, public charity is cold ; but the administration of it in Christchurch to our old, lufirmed, and friendless poor, is colder far than the hole in the earth in our public park where Peter Bomulus resided. What can we say of such charity aaconslstsln paying a high salary to an administrator to the neglect of such cases of which the above is but’a solitary specimen. That a man so aged and infirmed as Peter Bomulus is, for living in a hole in theeaith and picking food out of gutters that ha might not die of starvation and exposure, should end his days among fellows in our common gaol, is a crying scandal to all concerned. Yours, &0., « J. P. OLIVER.