A TERRIBLE STORY OF IN HUMANITY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1348, 28 August 1883, Page 4

A TERRIBLE STORY OF IN HUMANITY.

A Shocking story of " man's in- j humanity to man ” was unfolded at a ( inquest held by the West Bromwich coroner the other day, on the bodies of two young children who had met with an. agonising death by falling into aheap of burning cinders. It seems that a cinder-bank, composed of the live refuse from neighbouring works had been newly formed in the vicinity of the Union Furnaces, Smethwick, and about this bank the poor children of the neighbourhood were in the habit of clustering, in , order to pick up stray pieces of coal and coke for the use of their parents. On the day in question the two deceased, a bov and girl, aged respectively 11 and 13, were on the smouldering Black Country volcano, in ■ company with three others, engaged i in their filial but perilous task when i the bank suddenly gave way, precipi- I tated two little girls, named Hadley i and Evans, into the glowing crater ■ beneath. Benjamin Hadley, a child of 11, and brother ot the first-mentioned girl, went valiantly to tie assistance I of his sister, and her companion, but j in trying to extricate them he fell in himself, and shared their fate. Ultimately an elder brother named Joseph succeeded at considerable personal risk in getting all three children out of the furnace, but not until they had sustained terrible injuries, Will it be credited that during the whole time this heart-rending tragedy was being enacted, with its ebb and flow of hope and fear, its incidents of disaster and heroism, a strong man, who had been instrumental in forming the fatal mound, stood looking on within a few yards of the spot, and refused not only to stretch a band to the burning children, but even to render them the slightest assistance when he saw them writhing in agony after their extrication from the cinder-heap ; According to his view the children were trepassers; he had repeatedly ordered them away, and though he does not say so in many words, he evidently thought when he saw them disapper i in the treacherous cinder-heap they were rightly served.