that Argus monster, the Public, was set upon Ginx's Baby. A
well-known nobleman, calling at the workhouse to see a little
girl whom he had saved from infamy, as he passed down a corridor
was arrested by the notice on the door of our hero's room.
Curiosity took him in, and horror chained him there for some
time. Had he not entered, Ginx's Baby, spite of Snigger, would
in twenty-four hours have ceased to supply facts to history. He
was suffering from low fever, and his condition was as
sensationally shocking as any reporter could have wished. Out
rushed the peer for a doctor, took a cab to a magistrate and
detailed the whole case, to be repeated in next morning's papers.
Penny-a-liners ran to the spot, wrote vivid descriptions of the
baby and the room, and transcribed the notice. The Guardians
were drubbed in trenchant leaders and indignant letters. They,
instead of bending to the storm, strove to confront it, and
passed angry resolutions of a childish and grotesque character.
The few of them who possessed any sense of propriety were railed
at in the meetings till they ceased to attend. The uproar
outside increased. Why did not the President of the Poor-Law
Board interfere? At last he did interfere: that is, instead of
visiting the scene himself, and satisfying his own eyes as to the
truth of what his ears had heard, a process that would have taken
a couple of hours, he appointed a gentleman to hold an inquiry.
The Guardians became furious. The reports of their proceedings
read like the vagaries of a lunatic asylum or the deliberations
of the American Senate. They discharged Snigger for breach of
orders, substituting a relative of Mr. Stink. They put a lock on
the door, and passed food to the Baby by a stick. A committee
was appointed to see him fed, and they forwarded a memorial to
the Poor-Law Board, stating that "he daily had more food than he