"A MOST AWFUL OCURRENCE," EXETER, 1845.

"A most awful occurrence took place in the Penitentiary in this city on Monday morning, by which five young women, inmates of the establishment, met with a death as horrific as it was untimely.

"It is the custom, when any male persons enter the establishment, for the inmates to be removed out of sight - a precaution considered to be a necessary portion of the discipline to which this unfortunate class of persons are subjected before they return to honest courses.

"On this occasion, Messrs. Garton and Jarvis having been called on to repair a stove, Mr Garton had to pass through a laundry in which the inmates were working.  They being directed to 'clear',  immediately went to an open closet in the yard, and to the number of eighteen were huddled into it.

"The door was hardly closed upon them when the floor gave way, and they were all precipitated into a cesspool, of the existence of which the the inmates of the establishment were ignorant.

"The screech  and yell of consternation which was instantly set may be more easily imagined than described; and contrasting as it did with the merry bells ringing to greet the arrival of the Sheriff,  it had a sudden and fearful effect upon the household.

"Rushing out to see what was the cause,  they were dicovered scrambling over each other in the horrid filth, some gasping for breath, others clinging to the floor or vainly trying to climb up to the top, and the weaker trodden down.

"They were drawn out as quickly as possible; but so instantaneous was the suffocation, that five were already dead."

*

These truly horrific deaths would make national headlines these days and would be given many columns in print.  Eighteen young women herded and locked into a building who fall through a rotten floor into a cesspit where five of them drown in ordure!  This story would  hit the papers and there would be demands for an enquiry, resignations, names of the 'victims' ages, expert opinions and so on.  In The Western News of 22nd March 1845 we read only this short account.   There will be an inquest.  I shall look out for it.   

Open closet sounds like oxymoronic gobbledegook.  What could this place have been?  I suspect a lavatory.

The Penitentiary was, I think, in Bartholomew Street.  If so, it was a Church of England institution, essentially a prison to which you were 'recommended' by the magistrates, where fortunate persons hoped to save members of this unfortunate class of persons from sin through industry, that is to say, forced labour in a laundry.

This is one of the most disturbing reports that I have read.  It is alarming to think that if Mr.Garton had been permitted to walk trough the laundry, the girls would have had a bit of fun and so, perhaps Mr. Garton. Instead of which.....  

I shall not sleep tonight.