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,; • r; •• For tbo Courier.Mb. Editor: The dnderaigned -take the liberty of wkiq£ you the favor of an insertion in. the columns of your invaluable paper the following communication. Wo must say in the premises that we are unwilling td hurt the ieeiings of any private individual, and still more so that of officers who have been raised to public trust by the suffrages of our citizens. -Yet it seems tnjmwSte,guch officers are delinquent iu refuseto fulfil both the spirit and theletter of tho law which is made Co direct Cbem in the discharge of said duties, we hold that it i9 right for us or any one else to remonstrate against such delinquencies. Out of many such cases we shall merely select the last one, as a striking example or such delinquency, by the Overseers of the Poor of Lafayette.We had on the 3Qih uIl given them notice that a boy had been found dead at our wharves, whose destitute parents possessed1PysJfo'clTraditha3d iV few ha* 1 if n be*' 1IigE2Slay.Hoo/chawbboa-a*frojAftNetdluOLI;andbut five cents between them and death, of eve this world’s goods, Dad who had no other I J means to inter the boy. Wo applied to the Overseers of the Poor, they at first said they would grant the necessary relief on the father of the boy making an affidavit that he had not means to bury him. We had the father brought for tho purpose of satisfying them by taking said oath. Then they raised a new objection—refusing to give means of burial for the dead boy'unless the wretched parents would give up the balance of their children to them. The parents replied that the loss of one child was sufficient and that they could not consent to Jose the other two, if they were obliged to leave the dead one without burial or dig a hole in the ctncJ and put him into it. For the better understanding of the cose we must oxplain that the family's passage had been paid from New York to Covington by a friend of tbcir’e who resides in Terre Haute. Under such circumstances then, we cannot see why the Overseers of the Poor made such a demand of the poor parents except in their over zeal for the good of the county, wishing to add the expenses concomitant to live ones to that of dead ones, or on the other hand, by making such a demand on the unfortunate parents they might defeat the object sought for—the burying of the boy.When the Overseers of the Poor thus denied the means of buriul, for the honor of Lafayette, we must say that means was soon fuund to perform that last act of charity which our officers refused to do. Two or three turned out ami soon found means among our citizens, not one of whom was asked refused their mite to have the boy interred—in less than twenty minutes means was raised establishing the fact of that pliilantrophy which has always been the distinguishing mnrk of our townsmen. We may nUo remark, that in our humble opinion, we believe if such uicn as Messrs. Cox and Hotchkiss, had been in power during the prevalence of Cholera last reason, Lafayette would hove experienced double as many deaths as took place during the time of the prevalence of ihat dreadful scourge here; but we bud men then in office who did their duty promptly and with energy—thanks to Providence andthr»mCOLChiSorPerP’lm iAA1At of. loniTinin\bid*Ifuri0£seci
Newspaper Details
Daily Lafayette Courier
Lafayette, Indiana, US
Fri, Aug 02, 1850
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
IN, USA 18 Apr 2019
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