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Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1245, 14 April 1880, Page 2

The case of the prisoner who died recently in Invercargill Gaul, touching the death of whom an inquest lias just be£n concluded, is a matter that calls for a more searching inquiry than that held bv the Coroner. To us at a distance the circumstances surrounding the case appear but little removed from brutal. Here we have a human being for weeks complaining of ill-health and gradually sinking down to his grave with no other attention paid to him than a cursory examination by the medical officer, with the heartless result that the man was declared tit for work and punished because he still complained. For a week prior to his death the poor fellow wa3 totally neglected by the doctor whose duty it is to attend upon the sick prisoners, and he died like a dog, untended and unprovided with any of those remedies which science ha 3 so plentifully supplied for the alleviation, if not eradication, of the sufferings to which frail flesh is heir. The bare facfc that he was not seen by the gaol surgeon for a week, notwithstanding that he frequently complained of ill health, is paliKible evidence of criminal neglect, either on the part of the gaoler or the aurtreon, thatalpyld be visited by nothing ahort of dismissal. That even one of the worst type of the criminal class should ti;e ur.der such circumstances as those which have been recorded i>v telegraph is a H»it upon our Lasted civilisruion, and a lasting disgrace to all concerned. We are aware that many prisoners acquire th-f ability to so successfully sham illness as to occasionally escape hard labor and receive delicate attentions from doctors, and wc know also that the majority of ; prison keepers view with suspicion any plea of illness coming from the lips >f a prisoner; but the fact that dc- ■ cypU'<i>3 of the kind arc frequently practiced cannot be put forth as a B:;flic;ent pita for the disgraceful negifct that has in the case under review accelerated, if not caused, the death of an erring fellovr. creature. Judging from the meagre reports of the inquiry that have reached uh, the affair seems to 1/aye been treated very lightly by those most intimately connected with the case. Tlie p.)or fellow was only a prisoner undergoing punishment for .some offence against the laws of his country, and his death under painfully revolting circumstances dues uot appear to have caused a pang of regret and remorse it) the breasts of these

who transgressed one of the principal humane laws. " Send the lazy dog ;to work," in effect said the doctor ; " Go to work," said the gaoler ; and to work the dying prisoner went, pleading all the while that some effort might be made to save his life. This i 3 no exaggeration of the facts of one of the most disgraceful and inhuman affairs that has ever been known, in the history of New Zealand gaols. Such things might have occurred —and did occur—with impunity in some of -the old penal - settlements, in the. neighboring colonies in years long gone by without creating a feeling of abhorrence in the breasts of the people ; but we are not so hard-hearted in this favored colony, that the death of a prisoner under circumstances- attended with even less revolting heartlessriess fails to arouse a feeling of indignation in the breasts of all charitable people.