SAD RESULTS OF A BOX ON THE EAR.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2640, 25 June 1877, Page 3

SAD RESULTS OF A BOX ON THE EAR.

At Manchester, one day in the beginning of this month (March), a prisoner was charged with the manslaughter of a girl, 14 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 desired him to chastise her daughter if the girl did anything wrong. On the 4th of August last year the overlooker imagined that the girl had disobeyed some of the regulations of the 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 ou the side of the head with his hand. At dinner - time the poor girl complained of a pain in her head and lay down, unable to eat any dinner. On going home, about six in the afternoon, she still complained of headache ; 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 the rupture of one of the cerebral vessels, which might be caused by even a slight blow. The jury looked upon the case as one of death by misadventure, and the man was dis--charged, after an expression on the part the judge of a hope that other overlookers would not resort to such a mode of chastisement.

We have seldom heard a more instructive case than 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 outer ear is, fortunately, or unfortunately, seldom very sensitive. Fortunately it is not so, because of the pullings and pihchings which are inflicted upon it in punishment and in teasing, and in the ear-piercing in which savage nations rejoice, and which remains with us a " survival" of the habits of uncivilised ancestors. Unfortunately, too, ifc is not sensitive, because it seems to be imagined that then 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 the outer membrane of the eye, doubtless people would as little give children a box on the"ear as a blow in the eye—of the two, indeed, the latter would probably be productive of the least amount of permanent injury. A blow on the ear not only shakes the whole of the delicate structures of the head and of the 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 whose agency the function of hearing is performed. No one who has not seen them can imagine the exquisite delicacy of the tiny bones, the thin membranes, the fine arrangement of nerves, of blood vessels and vibrating fluids, for whose accommodation a special little hollow is carved out in one 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 aurists know, are very frequent; and abscesses of a serious kind not unfrequently come from even a slight blowsuch 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 do it. They may in a moment inflict injuries which can never be repaired,—Exchange.