An Irishman, his wife, and two children were brought to the alms-house in a complete state of starvation. They landed in the city from an emigrant ship, and had not tasted food for several days. The mother was wellnigh a perfect skeleton, and the sunken cheeks and eyes of the whole family told the melancholy truth that they were the victims of the most intense suffering. One of the children was so near dead that it could not walk, whilst it was with the utmost difficulty that even the father could totter over the floor. They were as nearly dead as it is possible for the living to be, and want of food was the principal cause which had brought them to this miserable state. In answer to all questions asked them, their replies were, “We want some bread; do give us some bread; we will die if you do not give us some bread.” As a matter of course their wants were immediately supplied, but the utmost caution was necessary in administering food. When they were seated at the table, the first thing the mother did was to feed her youngest child. In doing this she took not the least notice of herself, but uttered a strange wild laugh; and, when the child was made quite sick by even a spoonful of rice, the mother wept most bitterly, and said: “Oh, my child is going to die!—what shall I do to save its darling life?” Four days afterwards every member of this exiled family had passed into the unknown future.
On another occasion an intemperate woman was taken to the alms-house, ragged and reeling at the time, and bearing a little child, supposed to be about sixteen months old. It was literally a skeleton, entirely destitute of flesh, a mere fragment of humanity. The smaller portions of its arms and legs were not more than half an inch in thickness, while the corners of its mouth were drawn down, and its eyes so deeply sunken that it had the appearance of an old and decrepit woman. Its face was white as snow, its body almost as cold, and wrinkles upon its cheek and brow were distinctly marked; and what made the picture still more wretched was the fact that the poor child had the _whooping cough_ and was _totally blind_. The opinion of the attending physician was that the child had been famished. On questioning the mother about her offspring it was ascertained that the child had never taken any food but what came from her breast; its condition was partly attributed to this fact, and it was evident that all its sufferings were inherited from its mother; that _it had been a drunkard even from the hour of its birth_. It was found necessary to take the child away from its mother; but, as she would not give it up, she was taken to the Tombs, and at midnight, when the parent was in a deep sleep, the child was taken from her filthy and inflamed bosom, and placed in the hands of a careful nurse. The weeping and wailing of that forsaken mother, on the following morning, were terrible in the extreme. Her brain was on fire, and at the setting of the sun she was numbered with the dead. In less than a week thereafter the pauper child had followed its mother to Potter’s Field.