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    Untitled Article

    PLAYGROUNDS FOlt THE POOH . Some people think of " play" only as sport for children , or excusable for men in the intervals of business . But its best meaning , and we suspect the old tme meaning , is expressed when we speak of men haviug " full play for tlieir faculties , " " fair play in a light , " ox the " full play of the limbs . " The fair play of the limbs is as necessary for good health as sufficient ibod ; think , then , of the children of the poor , four © r five in one room , in houses without yards , in streets without enclosures , their best plav ' ground in some instances a narrow court To keep" these children "from play is not as if you

    kept them from a play at the theatre or tiny other amusement , useful and improving , but not essential . It is to keep tlieir little but growing limbs cramped ; it is to commence the bending of the b : ick , the twisting of the limbs , the stunting of the stature , the ¦ •¦ narrowing of the chest . If men were all clear-sighted physicians , and could actually see what is going on in the small bodies we cramp into stifling robnis , could sec how each hour of forced inaction , of bad air , is slowly telling on the vital powers and life-bearing organs , they might be shocked to see that " yonder foul murder ' s done , "

    slowly but surclyv The interposition of this topic this week by Mr . Slanoy in the House between t woroundsof tlie faction fight seems as strange as if a Belgian farmer sowed his seed after Ligny , and before Waterloo . Yet the seeds sown , on the morrow of Ligny grew np into golden corn , and were made into wholesome bread , when the army of Napoleon had long been shattered beyond hope . The good done by thisnew bill for facilitating playgrounds for poor children , may live in fresh cheeks and well-made limbs , when Mr . Cardwell ' s resolution AvilL be a very petty

    piece of very old Parliamentary gossip . Though London is closely covered -with houses , jet there are spaces that -would serve for playgrounds . The parks are to our mind much too jealously kept ; grass was certainly made to be seen , but the feeling of the turf beneath the feet is also pleasant , and should not be suggested as improper by so many iron railings . We have the . ladies' mile in Rotten-row , an excellent institution , where London beauties gather ¦ afresh the roses they lose in late hours ; but why not have . children ' s , acres in each park , where with some kind watching the children of poor parents ¦

    who cannot pay for a nursery maid might leave their children to play together for a few hours ? We have nurseries , for joung trees in our parks ; wliy not orgauize out-of-door nurseries for children ? It * you pass through the mean streets of a poor neighbourhood each house has its one ox two or three children , shut up in their own dwelling , listless enough , pale enough . Could we go from house to house , and collect them all , say from twelve to four , and send them , a regiment of infants ,-to same green and pleasant , ¦ enclosure in summer , or some small Crystal Palace in winter , viiat hundreds of happy little hearts you might

    make , what , a harvest of rosebuds you might iind on their pale cheeks after a month of such play ! This thing is done once a , year or so now , when sonic kind folks take them to Sydenhain ; it should be done every day . It would cost little or nothing , and the good it would do in many ways would he very great , for instance , inducing some la / . y parents for very shame to dress tlieir children neatly , besides the solid advantage of giving to our future citizens a fair eliunee of growing up strong men and healthy women . But \ ve arc almost ashamed to say , amidst those politico-economical reasons , that our first and chief thought about it is , ( . hut it would make the children themselves so huppy .

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    SANITARY CONDITION OF THE AllMY . IT . Tins causes of the excessive mortality in the troops both at home and abroad which were assigned by the various witnesses before thci Commission , are arranged under the four heads of : — I . Night duty . 2 . "V \ ant of exercise and suitable employment . '¦ 5 . Intemperate and debauched habits among ( ho soldiers . 4 . Crowding and iiisutlicicnt ventilation , and nuisances arising from latrines and defective sewerage in barracks . Examining the evidence upon those points , we find Colonel the lion . . 1 . Lindsay , of the Jb \ mt Guards , says that , with other causes assisting , tlie night duty is the must prominent cause of the excessive mortalit y in that corps . But what docs the reader suppose is Uii . s terrible night duty to which the stalwart Coldstreumer is exposed ?—anvthing

    as bad as the sentry duty at Hongkong , or the Deptford night guard on the banks of the Thames , redolent of the sewers and cesspools of all London , or the night duty on the granite wharfs and piers at Plymouth , where he is blown through and through For two hours by the keen north-easter ?—or is it as pestilential as the beat of the London policeman , through sinks and dens of Lambeth ? No ; but this is liis cruel lot—every fifth night lie is on guard fox two hours under the walls of the royal palaces , the Government offices , the Bank of

    England , th « Tower , &c . Nothing very loathsome or stagnant in these localities ; the sentry-boxes , as far as we know them , are generally placed in some sheltered nook-or other . Well , he is relieved , and retires to the guardroom , where , it is true , the poor fellow is n . orprovided with a feather-bed , but he can sleep , as u soldier should when waiting his guard , 011 the bunk before a roaring ( ire for four hours ; then he turns out for his last two hours , with which , his night work ends for nearly a week If we are to consider the mere loss of rest , the question , really becomes ludicrous . Compare the amount of rest possible to an accoucheur in good

    practice in London , or to that obtained by Members of Parliament on committee , or railway guards and engineers , or the whole body of naval and seafaring men : it is vastly in favour of the Guardsman . Colonel Lindsay speaks of the men lying down hi their watch-coats and perspiring , and then turning out into the cold air ; or it may be their coats were wet . There would , no doubt , be a certain amount of exciting cause in all this , but we suspect that if any special influence is to be assigned to the night duty , It will be found to be connected with the condition , of the guardroom . As the evidence does not

    afford any description of a guardroom , we shall supply one . In a word , it is generally a disgusting place 3 damp and dirty , and confined in dimensions . It is damp , because it is what is called cleaned every morning by upsetting buckets of water on the iloor and mopping them up again , and it is only the tremendous tire which the men contrive to keep going pretty much all the year round that keeps the place at all dry or purified . It is nearly always overcrowded at the worst time , that is , at night ; for there is frequently the guard and the pickets , and men brought hi by them , with any odd prisoners

    awaiting orders for court-martial—in all numbering from 30 to 10 persons . A certain proportion of the ¦ men ' ¦ " brought in" arc usually exhibiting all the disgusting etl ' ecLs of drunkenness , and the prisoners are often poor unfortunate deserters , halfstarved . and filthy , driven to the last extremity of suffering in trying to evade the laws . The clothes of these deserters arc sometimes so loathsome and so positively dangerous as a source of disease , that the medical oftlcer has ordered them to be burnt , and the men of the corps have clubbed , one an old jacket and another a pair of trousers or an old shirt , to clothe the man . It is not uncommon for

    these prisoners to be kept night and day in the guardroom , subsisting on the sixpence a day allowed , witli a short daily interval for exercise , for several weeks ; and , if we remember rightly , no sort of bed Is allowed them till they have been conlined in this guardroom for ten days . Such a permitted custom has always appeared to us not only as extreme "bad management , but calculated to produce disease amongst healthy men . " We can sec no reason why the guard should be made to associate with defaulters in this way , so demoralizing to the men . The moment a non-commissioned

    oIlicer or commissioned olHcer disgraces lmnsclt , he is ordered to his private room and not allowed to associate with any one . There could surely be no ( lilliculty raised against the plan of a separate yuardroom , not to call it a cell , for men awaiting tlieir trial . By such an arrangement , the men who are obliged to be in the guardroom , and who are honestly performing their duty , would not be subjected to moral and physical injuries arising from being crammed into a close and disgusting room with a company of drunkards , deserters , and suspects . Night duty , alleged as a cause of mortality , dccidcdlv breaks down . No doubt there arc instances

    of stations abroad exposed to malaria ; when , as at Hong-Kong for example , the bad elVeot upon the scut lies bus boon evident ; these are exceptional , and have been remedied now hy the establishment of a native police for nii » ht duty . A truer source of mortality for the Guards must bo sought , as we think , in the fact thai- they are alwavs in London , and consequently more exposed

    in the Line , 16 * 5 per 1000 per annum , and in the Guards , 14 5 per 1000 . In considering want of exercise and suitable employment as one of the causes alleged in the evidence , we start with the deduction , from the general tables of mortality , that occupations requiring much exercise of muscular power , whether in-doors or in the open air , are more favourable to life and health than those requiring * less exertion . Comparing the two classes of soldiers , Cavalry and Infantry , the result is in favour of the former , as 136 per 1000 is to 17-9 per 1000 . The report explains this by the greater amount of exercise taken by the cavalry

    to the allurements of . town life and the facilities for dissipation , not the least of which , by the way , is the late hours they are allowed to keep , -viz . halfpast ten at night , being an hoar later than , other troops are allowed ; especially for men who , we are told , " have necessarily a great deal of idle time on their hands . " We find in the report that when the Guards were removed from the indulgences of London life to suppress the rebellion in Canada in 1838 , tlieir health improved , though probably their duty was harder both day and night ; the rates were ,

    man in the open air , his grooming and general stable duty , his horse exercise andhis drill with .- ' the sword , which bring into play a greater variet y of muscles ; whereas , nothing can be more constrained than the exercise of a"foot soldier , and we might add , nothing could be much less adapted for his active duties than the present equipment of the infantry inan , except it were that in . which he was accoutred , for the great ' . Crimean , campaign . As walking with a load of from fifty-six to sixty pounds' weight to carry is the principal function of a foot soldier , one would expect that all the stress being upon his feet we should find .

    him with a particularly well-designed pair of shoes . Nothing of the kind ; he is placed in a pair of large thick bluchers , made of the hardest and most inflexible leather—instruments of'torture , iufacfc , on the march—technically called " ammunitioners . " Then his pack is strapped on his chest in the way most calculated to chafe his arms and oppress his breathing . In the ranks we find him placed in what is so . admiringly called " a compact mass ; " and so indeed he is , for he is literally wedged in , and such , is-the pressure in the centre of a rank that careless or weakly men are sometimes actually squeezed out in

    the process of wheeling . This gives an idea of the sort of exercise the men are made to undergo every iay ; ' and the futility of- such routine-training of men destined for great bodily exertions is soon shown in the speedy way in which it all becomes upset in a campaign . The only attempt to develop a man ' s muscular system properly is made upon the recruits for a short time after joining—they get what is called " setting-up drill , " winch is all very well in its way , but should be carried on throughout a regiment constantly . Above all , as it seems to us , should the soldier , as well as everybody , indeed , be trained in athletic exercises ? We cannot

    sufficiently urge upon the authorities the necessity of carrying out the recommendation of the Commission upon this subject , founded as it is upon the advice and experience of such veterans as Generals Mansell and Lawrence , the Quartermaster-General , and Colonel Lindsay . The Report says : " Of the time that the soldier has to himself lie spends a very small portion in exercise out of doors ; every encouragement and facility should be given to the soldier to practise athletic and out-of-door games and sports , as necessary both for his physical and moral health . In the French army t hesc considerations are so

    entirely recognized , and so great is the importance attached to them , that not only are the soldiers made to pass through a certain course of gymnastic excr ciscs , but among the duties prescribed in the instructions for the medical inspectors is that of inquiring into the practice of these exercises in their districts . We arc , therefore , inclined to place want of exercise , and especially of that species of exercise which useful labour supplies , and which would brace and develop the chest aud frame , among the causes of the sickness aud mortality of the infantry soldier . ( To be , continued . ' )

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    Xkw Roman ; Catholic IJwhov . —The Weekly IicyLitur is authorised to announce that the Kcv . Francis Amherst liua been nominated to the vacant Itomnn Catholic sec of Northampton . Mr . Amlieisit is head of ( he senior brunch of thu family , from n cadet of which lCurl Ainhtirst is deseuiuUid , ami wliiolt has always retained the ltoinuu ( Jutliolie fuith . Cmiiicn-HATio L ) icm : a . t . — A church rate bus been n : fused in Trinity parish , Bridguwnter , by a largo majority .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), May 22, 1858, page 497, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2243/page/17/