William Howard Russell’s Diary: Sudden Death of an English Officer.

On returning from my ride next morning, I took up the Baltimore paper, and saw a paragraph announcing the death of an English officer at the station; it was the poor fellow whom I saw sitting at General Mansfield’s steps yesterday. The consul was absent on a short tour rendered necessary by the failure of his health consequent on the discharge of his duties. Finding the Legation were anxious to see due care taken of the poor fellow’s remains, I left for Baltimore at a quarter to three o’clock, and proceeded to inquire into the circumstances connected with his death. He had been struck down at the station by some cerebral attack, brought on by the heat and excitement; had been carried to the police station and placed upon a bench, from which he had fallen with his head downwards, and was found in that position, with life quite extinct, by a casual visitor. My astonishment may be conceived when I learned that not only had the Coroner’s inquest sat and returned its verdict, but that the man had absolutely been buried the same morning, and so my mission was over, and I could only report what had occurred to Washington. Little value indeed has human life in this new world, to which the old gives vital power so lavishly, that it is regarded as almost worthless. I have seen more “fuss” made over an old woman killed by a cab in London than there is over half a dozen deaths with suspicion of murder attached in New Orleans or New York.