§ SIR EDWARD WATKIN, in rising to call attention to the case of the late Gunner Charlton, and to move—
That the facts disclosed in the case of the late Gunner Charlton call for the serious attention of the War Office, both as respects the cruelty inflicted upon the individual soldier, and the delay and uncertainty exhibited in reference to the compensation for his suffering and injuries,said, the objects he had in bringing forward the case were two-fold—first, if possible to vindicate the memory and obtain a proper inquiry into the grievances of an estimable soldier; and the other to prevent, if possible, similar cruelties being inflicted on any soldier in the future. The right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Home Department had wisely, with great promptitude and humanity, dealt with the second part of the question, inasmuch as he had told the House the other night that he had ordered the dietary of military prisoners in Millbank and other civil prisons to be raised a little above the standard of that of the civil criminals confined in those establishments, and he had also slightly improved the dietary of the civil prisoners. This, therefore, could no longer happen, that whereas the soldier on service or in barracks received about 7lb. of meat, in addition to his other food, weekly, the moment he was confined at Millbank all the animal food he received was 8oz., or 4oz. upon two occasions throughout the seven days. The case of Gunner Charlton had been the subject of Question and Answer in that House on eight or nine occasions, and the facts of the case, as ascertained by careful inquiry, were these. Up to the time of his death, two months ago, this man had been 13 years in the Royal Artillery, and had served in India and in England. For some very slight error of discipline he was sent for 112 days to Millbank, and whilst there he fell ill, and was sent to the hospital. On his leaving that place, being unable to do his work, consisting of making 14,000 turns at the crank, picking a certain quantity of oakum, and he (Sir Edward Watkin) believed, doing some shot drill besides, he was sentenced by the governor to solitary confinement for 48 hours in a dark cell, and to live on 1369 bread and water—1lb of bread for the 24 hours. The result was that when he came out of the cell his feet were numbed and almost destitute of sensation. From that time, until the moment for his discharge, he suffered from that feeling of numbness. On the 1st of March, 1875, on a bitter winter's day, this man was handed over to his comrades to be taken back to Exeter. His clothing was the ordinary undress of a soldier. He had neither cloak, great coat, nor outside wrapper of any kind; and he was sent out in the early morning, when snow was upon the ground, and there was a severe frost, without having had one atom of food or a drop of drink. The reason assigned for this by the Millbank authorities was that at seven o'clock, when he was discharged, the hour of breakfast had not arrived, and it was not thought necessary to alter the arrangements of the prison for the sake of this one case; but it was said they gave him 6d. He had to march across Hyde Park, through the snow, to get to the Great Western Railway. When the train arrived at Exeter in the afternoon the man had to march to the Topsham Barracks. The result was that the next day he was totally disabled, and went to the hospital. It was then found that he had been suffering from frostbite, and after being delirious for some hours, suffering terrible agonies, he lost almost the whole of one foot, and all the toes of the other. This was the case of a poor man being literally "done to death" by cruelty in prison, by neglect afterwards, and by an amount of procrastination in dealing with the case which it was impossible for anybody but the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War to explain. He (Sir Edward Watkin) had ascertained from the gentleman who had had to do with his spiritual welfare that Gunner Charlton was "a man of good character, of more than ordinary intelligence, popular with his brother soldiers, and a good man;" although he did not mean to say that he had not the faults of a soldier. It seemed to him that this was a case which might do damage to recruiting and to discipline; and therefore he applied for information to Mr. Latimer, a magistrate of Exeter, and that gentleman told him that when, by chance, one of the artillerymen from the company in which 1370 Charlton served called upon him to attest a recruit, he said, in reply to his questions, that he knew Charlton, that his toes were off, and that the whole of the flesh was dropping off his feet. Mr. Latimer wrote down these words and read them to the bombardier, who said that Charlton was a ruined man, that he was delirious from fever, and that in this state he raved about Millbank, and said the dogs were gnawing his feet. The right hon. Gentleman promised that this case should be dealt with on its merits, and some relief given to this unfortunate man. The Home Secretary handed him over to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham (Mr. S. Cave), who was at the head of Chelsea Hospital, and the Secretary for War recommended the case to the consideration of the Board of that hospital. But would it be believed that from the month of May, 1875, until the 1st or 2nd of January this year nothing was done to rectify the injuries inflicted upon this unfortunate man? A story was got up that Charlton had brought on his ailment by his excesses, but that was unfounded, and it was contradicted by the medical gentleman whom he (Sir Edward Watkin) sent down to see the man at Exeter, his report being that his constitution must have been perfectly healthy, or he could not have recovered from the severe injuries under which he had suffered. Charlton had, in reality, been the victim of cruelties as great as any which were perpetrated in Bulgaria. He had himself visited the cell at Millbank in which Charlton was confined, and he found there was a long slit in the wall opening out into the foss that surrounded the gaol. Consequently the draught in cold weather would produce such a stoppage of the circulation as must terminate in frostbite. On the 14th of February last year he (Sir Edward Watkin) was informed by the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary for War that he had laid the case before the Chelsea Hospital Board, and had desired them to give every possible attention to it at the earliest moment. He wrote, he was ashamed to say how many letters, to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham, and at length he got a reply from the Board, dated the 11th of December, stating that the case in question had come under the consideration of the Board, held on the 28th 1371 of November, when, as the circumstances of the man's disability did not bring it under the provisions of any existing Warrant that would authorize the award of any pension by the Commissioners, it had been forwarded under the circumstances to the special consideration of the Treasury. At that time the man had been 17 months in hospital, and when he was discharged he (Sir Edward Watkin) sent him a sum of money to keep him out of the workhouse, and when he died he supplied the family with the means to give him Christian burial without their having to undergo the indignity of attending a pauper funeral. He then wrote to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shoreham, calling his attention to the case, and stating, although it was, he admitted, a hard word to use, that this unfortunate man was being slowly murdered; first, in consequence of his sufferings in prison; and, secondly, from the unaccountable delay in dealing with his case. On the 17th of August the right hon. Gentleman replied, telling him that it was to the War Office, and not to the Chelsea Commissioners, he should have addressed his letter, and that therefore he should not attempt to fasten the charge of murder on him. The right hon. Gentleman further said that the Hospital would have to decide upon the case of Charlton when it came before them; but they could not even take it into consideration until the new Warrant was issued. He next applied to the Secretary of the Treasury, from whom he obtained a great deal of courtesy; but though that hon. Gentleman was usually very expeditious, he did not make much progress with him on this matter. Having been foiled in all these attempts to rouse the attention of the authorities to the sufferings of this unfortunate man, he ventured to address a letter to the Field-Marshal Commanding-in-Chief, telling him that the state of Millbank Prison, where 500 soldiers were imprisoned, was such as to demand a personal visit from the highest military authority in the kingdom. He then went down into the country, and on the 8th of January, not knowing what had occurred in the meantime, and finding that Charlton was being worn out with disappointment and delay, he again wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury, asking if anything had been 1372 done in the matter, and got a reply from that hon. Gentleman's secretary, Mr. Primrose, informing him that the Treasury had authorized a pension of ls. per day to Gunner Charlton, but that he had observed from the papers of the day that the man had since died, adding that it was not considered necessary that he (Sir Edward Watkin) should be apprised of the fact. He thought it was certainly strange that no announcement of the pension being granted should have been made, and on receiving that letter he immediately applied to the hon. Gentleman for the respective dates of the granting of the pension and the death of the pensioner. He should mention that on the 13th of December he had received a letter from the man, stating he had been told by a fellow-soldier that it took so many days between the application for and the ratification of a pension, and that he did not expect to hear anything about his pension until the 10th. That day came and went without his receiving any intimation of the kind, and so for the 14th, 15th, the 16th, the 17th, the 18th and the 19th, until at last on the 20th this poor soldier, broken down in health and mind, packed up all his little goods, and left his father's house in a state of dejection and despair, and was not heard of again until the 31st, when he was found in the streets of Woolwich in a dying state, and removed to the workhouse. According to Mr. Primrose's reply, the pension was granted on the 30th, when the man no longer required it, and on the 1st, the very day Her Majesty was proclaimed Empress of India, this old soldier, who had served her for many years, died in a workhouse. That was the story, and he (Sir Edward Watkin) wanted to know if any one was to blame? No doubt ho would be told that this was according to rule—that this was an unfortunate and heart-breaking business — but that everything was done according to regulation. They all recollected how profound was the national sympathy when Her Majesty visited the disabled soldiers in hospital at Netley after the Crimean War, and he know wanted to know whether the right hon. Gentleman would tell this story to the Queen? It was the Queen's Army, and would he lay bare the facts before Her Majesty? If the right hon. Gentleman would not, he 1373 (Sir Edward Watkin) was satisfied that the Strangers in the Gallery would tell the story to the public, so that it would become impossible in time to do a man to death in a military prison by slow starvation. He begged to move the Resolution of which he had given Notice.Amendment proposed,
To leave out from the word "That" to the end of the Question, in order to add the words "the facts disclosed in the case of the late Gunner Charlton call for the serious attention of the War Office, both as respects the cruelty inflicted upon the individual soldier, and the delay and uncertainty exhibited in reference to the compensation for his suffering and injuries,"—(Sir Edward Watkin,)—instead thereof.
MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, that if the story which had been told by the hon. Gentleman the Member for Hythe were entire; and if it were not partially true, but the whole truth, then it would no doubt justly demand the attention of the House and the Government. But there had been au extraordinary colouring given to the case which made it seem a very different one from what it really was. The circumstances were briefly these—On the 10th of November, 1874, Gunner Charlton was tried by court-martial at Exeter for insubordination, and was sentenced to 104 days imprisonment with hard labour. He was sent to Millbank, where, on one occasion only, he complained of slight ill-health and was attended to, being taken off shot-drill and put upon lighter work. He remained in Millbank up to March 1, when ho was put in charge of a sergeant, with 6d., the usual allowance for his breakfast, and sent down to Exeter. Ho then made no complaint of anything being the matter, but, no doubt his feet had got into a bad state, not from cold, but from other causes, because the warders had complained of the offensive smell from his feet. He had to walk through the snow, as the hon. Member had said, over Hyde Park to the Great Western Railway Station, and, no doubt, had a cold journey; and it was in the course of that journey that the frost laid hold of his feet, which were previously in a bad state, though he did not complain of it. There was no ground for saying that it had arisen from any ill-treatment he experienced on his journey. 1374 Being taken to the hospital at Exeter, he was afterwards transferred to the Herbert Hospital, Woolwich, where he remained till November 21 in last year. Now, it was a rule that no man could receive a pension as long as he was in the Service; he must first be discharged before being entitled to a pension. So long, therefore, as he was in hospital, he was in the service and in the pay of the Crown, and could not receive a pension. As to his imprisonment he (Mr. Hardy), when the hon. Member asked the Question, desired the Home Office to make inquiries, and afterwards requested that somebody — Dr. Guy, he believed — should represent the War Office in that inquiry. The whole state of the prison, so far as related to Charlton's case was investigated by two medical gentlemen, and the cell in which he was confined was examined and found to be thoroughly warmed. There were 38 prisoners in similar cells, and all were found to be thoroughly warm, and no complaint on the subject was ever made by any of the prisoners. The bedding also was examined and was found to be sufficient. In fact, there was the most distinct statement made by those who conducted the examination that there was nothing that could affect Charlton's health in the matter of warmth. It should be remarked too that Charlton had ample opportunities of complaining if he wished to do so. With respect to the dietary, that was fixed, not by the Secretary for War or any other person of his own authority, but by medical investigation, as every one knew. He did not mean to say that the dietary for military prisoners might not have been unfit for the man under the circumstances; and upon his (Mr. Hardy's) suggestion some improvement was made with reference to that class of prisoners, and when the matter was brought before the Home Secretary his right hon. Friend thought the dietary so sufficient, that he adopted it for the ordinary prisoners also in Millbank, so that in this case it was not the Military that followed the Civil, but the Civil the Military. Then the hon. Gentleman said, that he (Mr. Hardy) made a promise. He did, he said would fully recommend the case to the Chelsea Commissioners, and he did so. But the Chelsea Commissioners acted under a Warrant which bound them not to 1375 assign a pension until the man was discharged. Charlton was discharged on the 21st of November, 1876; on the 29th the Commissioners officially received the recommendation, and they recommended that the Treasury should be asked to approve a pension of 1s. a-day. It should be remembered that this man had no claim to a pension, except from his misfortunes; but still he had suffered so severely and so much out of proportion to his offence, that he (Mr. Hardy) thought it a just case to recommend for a pension, which, however, could not be given by the Commissioners alone. On the 9th of December a letter went to the Treasury from the War Office, and on the 30th of December the Treasury informed the War Office, that a pension of a 1s. a-day would be granted. On that day Charlton could not be found; he had gone away from his house, but he was found on the following day, the 31st of December, as described, in a dying condition in the streets of Woolwich. Any one who heard the speech of the hon. Gentleman would think from it that the man had been turned out of the hospital uterly denuded of money.
§ SIR EDWARD WATKINsaid, he had not put the case in that way. He had stated that the man was taken to the house of his father, who treated him with the greatest possible care, and that he might have received some small arrears.
MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, the small arrears which the man did receive amounted to £20 2s. 8d. The man received his accumulated pay—£15 8s. 4¼d., £3 14s. 4d. as compensation for clothing, which he did not draw during the time he was in the hospital, and £1 in advance of his pension. While the man was in the hospital he could not receive a pension, because he was receiving pay, but immediately he left the hospital on the 21st of November, the Commissioners recommended that a pension should be granted, and it was granted, and it would have been given to him if he had lived to receive it. Perhaps it was unfortunate that Charlton should have had so much money, but, at all events, at the end of December the money was all gone and the man was found dead. He (Mr. Hardy) could not blame himself for anything he had done in the matter. He felt as deeply for the unfortunate man's sufferings as the hon. 1376 Gentleman himself, and was as innocent of those sufferings as anyone could be. He believed that the man would have had justice done him if he had lived, but, at any rate, it was no public fault that he did not receive the pension.
§ COLONEL MUREsaid, that the statement which the right hon. Gentleman had made put a totally different complexion on the case, and he thought that the hon. Member who had brought forward the Motion (Sir Edward Watkin) ought to have informed himself beforehand of what the Secretary for War had done. For a long time the House was under the painful impression that this man had been done to death, but that could not be said of a person who left the hospital with £20 in his pocket, even though he might have been in bad health at the time. At any rate, he could not see that any blame could be imputed to the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for War, and he (Colonel Mure) would suggest that before hon. Gentlemen brought forward painful cases of this sort, it was right that they should inquire into them and avoid giving them any undue colouring.
MR. SULLIVAN, while admitting that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had certainly put the case in a new light, could not see the justice of the rebuke which the hon. and gallant Member (Colonel Mure) had administered to his hon. Friend the Member for Hythe, who had afforded an excellent guarantee of his bona fides for his investigation of the matter, and his belief in the wants of the man, by putting his hand in his pocket to relieve him. He did not believe that the hon. Member had concealed a syllable with regard to any feature in the case. He trusted that the House would not be led away by any reactionary feeling on the strength of the 20 sovereigns from a point of great importance which his hon. Friend had brought out—namely, the fact that since Dickens wrote, the Circumlocution Office was still flourishing in the land.
§ MR. MITCHELL HENRYsaid, that the discussion ought not to come to an end with the idea that any incorrect statement had been made by the hon. Member for Hythe. He wanted to know how it was possible that this man should have been suffering from disease in the feet unknown to the medical officer. In 1377 his opinion, such a circumstance implied, to say the least, a great want of supervision at Millbank. No one could suppose that the right hon. Gentleman opposite had not a tender heart, or that the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital were wanting in humanity; but this case certainly showed that circumlocution prevailed in the public offices to such an extent as to be entirely destructive of everything like justice to those who were suffering under a grievance. He did not think this was a case to be got rid of by a mere shrug of the shoulders. He felt bound to express his entire sympathy with the sufferings of the soldier, and was afraid it would be found that the course of proceeding taken in the case would tell against recruiting for the Army very greatly.
§ MR. STEPHEN CAVEsupposed the House would expect him to say a word or two in consequence of the attack which had been made on the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital, of whom he was one. He had at the outset told the hon. Member for Hythe that it was impossible to bring the case before the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital till the soldier was discharged; but he added that a new Warrant was being framed, and he would endeavour to get it enlarged, so as to bring cases of this kind under the supervision of the Commissioners. He was sorry to say anything against a dead man, but when charges of this kind were made it was necessary to state plain facts. The Commissioners were bound by fixed rules, and they had no power whatever to give this man a pension, for this reason—He had been 13 years in the Army, but he had forfeited time so as to reduce his service to little over 12 years. What was his character? He had been four times tried by court-martial, and his name appeared 16 times in the defaulters' book. Then, the medical evidence showed that the man did not incur this disability in and by the Service. It was, therefore, quite impossible under the old rules to get a farthing of pension for this man. According to the promise he made to the hon. Member for Hythe, he did what he could to get into the new Warrant some regulation enabling the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital to take into consideration exceptional cases of this kind. The Warrant, of course, took some time to bring out, but it did contain the regula- 1378 tions to which he had referred. The man was discharged, and then his case was taken into consideration. The Commissioners were desirous to put the most liberal construction on the Warrant, and they did as much as could possibly be done in the case. They brought it under the new Warrant as a matter of grace and compassion, and recommended a pension of 1s. per day. The rest of the story had been told by the Secretary of State for War. Reference was obliged to be made both to the War Office and to the Treasury; both concurred. The reason why so much delay had occurred was that the man was not discharged. He, unfortunately, died before he could enjoy his pension. Ho did not in the slightest degree care to question the bona fides of the hon. Member for Hythe; but he submitted that there was no justification for his charge of slow murder. It was right and proper that when the money of the public was to be expended that care and caution should be exercised. But if those hon. Members who talked of circumlocution sat, as he did, at the Chelsea Board, they would find that cases which were regulated by fixed rules were decided with the utmost promptitude, while doubtful cases were dealt with as liberally as possible, not only on the ground of humanity of which the Chelsea Commissioners might claim to have at least as much as the hon. Member, but also on the ground of policy. He repeated that he was sure the House would feel that no charge of neglect or inhumanity could be brought either against the War Office or the Commissioners of Chelsea Hospital.
§ SIR HENRY HAVELOCKsaid, he had no hesitation in declaring that the facts stated in this case could not have occurred in any military prison. He wished to know whether any steps had been taken to prevent in future the discharge of prisoners from Millbank at 7 o'clock in the morning without food and with only 6d. for maintenance during the day, and required to undertake a journey such as this to Exeter in the state this man was proved to have been. That was a great aggravation of his previous sufferings; and he trusted there would be no repetition of such a case as the one under consideration.
§ MR. MONKcalled attention to the fact that a warder had stated that the man's feet were in a very bad condition, 1379 and asked whether by the rules of the prison it was not his duty to report such a case to the medical officers? Looking at the fact that the man had lost 13lb. in weight during his incarceration, it must have been notorious that he was in a very bad state of health. There must therefore have been neglect on the part of some of the officials of Millbank.
§ MR. CAMPBELL BANNERMANagreed with his hon. Friend (Mr. Monk) that the most important point not altogether cleared up was with reference to the surgeon and the warder of Millbank—why they did not discover before the man was discharged that his feet were in such a state that he could not undertake the journey to Exeter. He thought there was great neglect on the part of those in authority in Millbank, or such a case could not have occurred, and this neglect required further explanation.
§ MR. HARDCASTLEobserved that while this poor man was discharged from Millbank in an enfeebled and destitute condition, and required to travel to Exeter, he was still a soldier in Her Majesty's Service. It appeared to him there had been a great want of proper attention to this man, and he was surprised that he should have been sent in frosty weather from Millbank to Exeter without a great coat. With reference to the cell in which the deceased had been placed for 48 hours during a severe frost, if the description which had been given of it were correct, there could be no doubt that the arrangements at Millbank were extremely unsatisfactory.
MR. GATHORNE HARDYsaid, that the man had again and again an opportunity of seeing the surgeon, but he never complained of the state of his feet, and they were never examined. He had, however, as he (Mr. Hardy) had said, complained of debility, but only once. As to the cell, the committee stated that it was on the upper floor, and one of the warmest in the prison. The dark cell was dry, spacious, and well ventilated. Then with respect to his not having had a great coat, the fact was that the serjeant who accompanied him had taken off his own coat and given it to him to wear on the journey down to Exeter.
§ SIR EDWARD WATKINsaid, the dark cell was below high-water mark of the river.
1380 Question, "That the words proposed to be left out and stand part of the Question," put, and agreed to.