ALLEGED THEFT OF A BODY FROM A WORKHOUSE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2502, 14 April 1882, Page 3

ALLEGED THEFT OF A BODY FROM A WORKHOUSE.

Recently the Sheffield Board of Guardians held a protracted inquiry into a most remarkable cate. A man named John Wood, formerly a draper in easy circumstances in Sheffield, has for several years been in diffi culty, and latterly lived with his wife in lodgings in West street. On Saturday Wood become exceedingly ill, and his life was despaired of. His landlady, who had three other lodgers, was afraid that if Wood died in her house the other three lodgers might leave. She therefore requested Mrs Wood to remove her dying husband to the workhouse. A cab was procured, and the poor fellow, accompanied by his wife, was driven to the workhouse, a distance of over two miles. There Wood only survived five minutes after being putin bed. The same evening the widow arranged to have her husband buried on Tuesday. On that day she attended with several relatives from Manchester, who were anxious to see the corpse. Mrs Wood accordingly asked that the body might be shown to them. She was informed by those in charge of the Union dead house that the cofflu was screwed up. At her request a coffin, bearing her husband’s initials on a label, was opensd, when it was found that the corpse was that of a man of seventy-five, while her husband was only thirty-six. The bedy was afterwards identified aa that of an aged pauper named Ellis. The attention of the Governor, Mr Hastie, having been called to the matter, he made inquiry, and it was discovered that Wood’s body had been taken to the medical school in Surrey street, over two miles away. A cab was procured and the body brought back. The widow insisted before tho guardians yesterday that the body bore marks of the operator’s knife upon the neck, which was swollen level with the chin, and stated _ that there was blood upon the shirt. A neighbor added that there were nine lancet marks on the neck, Mr Hastie, the governor, said he had been assured by the medical men that nothing had been done to the body, but the widow and her friends stubbornly adhered to their statement. It appears that the bodies, when taken into the dead-house at the workhouse, are labelled with the initials of the dead persons. There are usually four assistants in charge. One of these assistants was dismissed on Saturday by the governor and before he left, according to the statement of the governor, tampered with the labels and thus miwed up the bodies out of spite at his removal. The workhouse authorities adjourned the case for a week to admit of the fullest investigation.