A BOX ON THE EAR.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5077, 2 July 1877, Page 3

A BOX ON THE EAR.

(From the Queen.) ' At Manchester, one day in the beginning of March last, a prisoner was charged with the manslaughter of a girl, fourteen years of age, one of the hands employed in a mill. The prisoner was overlooker in the mill where the girl was employed,; and the mother of the girl admitted that she had desired him to chastise her daughter if the girl did anything wrong. On the 4th of August in last year the overlooker imagined that the girl had disobeyed some of the regulations of tha mill, in that she had gone out to get hot water for breakfast. In consequence of this supposition, and, we suppose, in consequence also of the permission of the mother, he punished the girl by hitting her on the side of the head with his hand. At dinner time the poor child complained of a pain in her head, andday down, unable to eat any dinner. On going home, about six in the afternoon, she still complained of; her head ; about half-past six in the morning she became insensible, and died about a quarter to seven. Several witnesses proved that the blow was nothing more than a “ box on the ear.” The evidence of medical men showed that death was caused by v'v>toe of one of the cerebral vessels, which rntgllfc be caused by even a slight blow. The jury looked upon the case as one of death by misadventure, and the man was discharged, after an expression on the part of the Judge of a hope that other: overlookers would not resort to such a mode of" chastisement. . Wo have seldom read a more instructive case than that to which we have now referred, and we earnestly beg the attention of all our readers to it. A box on the ear is one of the most common modes of punishing children when they are subjected at all to corporal : punishment, and it is one to which servants, and we are sorry to say, teachers and parents (who ought to know better) often resort, under the impression that the chastisement inflicted, is rather a slight one. The enter ear is, fortunately or unfortu-; nately, seldom very sensitive. Fortunately it is not so, because of the pullings and pinchings which are inflicted on it in punishment and in teasing, and in the ear-piercing in which savage nations rejoice, and which rei mains with us as a, “survival” of the habits of uncivilised ancestors. Unfortunately, too, it is not sensitive, because it seems to be imagined that the middle and inner parts of the ear, to which the outer passage leads, are equally insensitive, and so -calculated to give little pain when assaulted. '■

If the outer ear were , as sensitive as tho outer membrane of tho eye, doubtless people would as little give children a box on the ear as a blow in the eye—of tho two, indeed, the latter would probably be productive of the less amount of permanent injury, A blow on tho ear not only shakes tho whole of the delicate structure of the head, and of tho brain, which lies within the cranium, or great bony box that forms the larger part of the skull, but it directly affects the organ of hearing itself in those inner and central portions by' whoso agency the function of hearing is performed. Kb one who has not seen them can imagine tho exquisite delicacy of the tiny bones, the thin membranes, tho fino arrangements of nerves, of blood-vessels, and vibrating fluids, for whoso accommodation a special little hollow is carved out,of the bones of the skull. A blow with the hand brought to bear on the

ear is like a blow with a hammer on a thin case containing delicate vessels of precious Venetian glass. A box. on the ear is one of the most senseless and cruel of all the punishments inflicted on children. Cases of death resulting as quickly as the one recorded above do not, it is true, often occur. But cases of deafness, as all aurists know, are veiy frequent ; and abscesses of a serious kind not unfrequently come from even a slight blow—such as may be given merely in fun. We would beg all who may be inclined to inflict a box on the ear to pause in time, and not to do it. They may, in a moment, inflict injuries which can never be repaired.