CAN IT BE TRUE?

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 465, 10 June 1890, Page 2

CAN IT BE TRUE?

One can hardly credit the shameful tale concerning the veterans of the Crimea. Lieutenant Wightman, the Secretary of Balaclava Commission, writes to a Kent newspaper stating that there are no less than eighteen survivors of the renowned Six Hundred known to be in the lowest depths of misery. Some are in the workhouse, others have become street beggars, and others are crippled and in extreme want. The names and (when known) the addresses of the paupers are given. One man, named Doyle, was orderly to the Duke of Cambridge, and last year, after repeated applications and four months of waiting, he got £4 out of the Duke, a man who is getting annually thousands upon thousands from the British taxpayers, for no real service and no other reason than that he is a twig of the expensive tree of Royalty. Lieutenant Wightman makes one strong point in his appeal to the public. He says 1 “ Lord Cardigan’s words to the survivors of the Six Hundred the morning after ths charge had been repeated to me, although I was not there to hear them. He said: 1 Men, you have done a glorious deed I England will be proud of you, and grateful to you. If you live to get home, be sure you will all be provided for. Notone of you fine fellows will ever have to seek refuge in the workhouse !’" The story is too disgraceful and shocking for us to believe that it can be wholly true. Britishers have always been noted for the pride they take in those men who "Save not hesitated to risk sacrificing their lives for the honor of their country, and we can hardly believe that the surviving heroes of one of the most glorious responses to the call of duty the world has ever known should be so shabbily cast aside, to grovel in the worst phases of a pauper’s lot* how that they havß got

beyond that period in life when it would be possible for them to make suitable provision forthemselves. If the story be true it is one of the most sorrowful illustrations we have yet had of how a vast army of parasites while battening upon the Brilish taxpayer are deaf to all appeals from those starving men who have done real service to their country.