"At the Chester Board of Guardians yesterday, a discussion took place as to whether, in view of the Christmas dinner, it would be advisable to allow the inmates to have knives to cut their meat. It was explained that at present the paupers had to tear the meat to pieces with their fingers and teeth.... The Rev. O. Rawson proposed that they should buy knives and forks.... Mr. Charmley, farmer, opposed the proposal.... The motion to hire knives and forks on Christmas Day only was put, and carried by thirteen votes to ten." [Sidenote: _Manchester under the Microscope_] The negligence and delay in administering Parish relief moved _Punch_ in 1876 to declare that sick paupers were worse treated than sick cows or horses. As an illustration of "The way we die now," there are further exposures of cruelty in lunatic asylums, and the hard-heartedness of Guardians in harrying "bundles of rags." But these revelations are fewer than in former years, and dwell more on mismanagement and extravagance than actual inhumanity. Thus the report of the committee of inquiry into the administration of the Metropolitan Asylums Board in 1885 revealed gross waste and extravagant consumption of wine and stimulants, not by the patients, but by the officials. _Punch_ was "so long accustomed to hear of the wondrous doings of 'Manchester the Great' and the grand example she set to the rest of the Kingdom in all that constituted good and pure government and sound finance," that he could not repress a certain malicious satisfaction at the result of the audit of the accounts of her Corporation by the "Citizens' auditor," published in the autumn of 1884. The first instalment, reviewed in October, is an entertaining document winding up with an allusion to the pantomime of the _Forty Thieves_, fully justified by the further revelations summarized by _Punch_ a month later:-- MANCHESTER'S PLUCKY AUDITOR This bold Gentleman continues his amusing revelations to the apparent delight of the ratepayers, and the disgust of the bumptious Corporation. We can only make room for one or two extracts. This is the bill for a dinner, at the Queen's Hotel, for the Members of the Baths and Wash-houses Committee, at which it will be seen that they drank punch, sherry, hock, champagne, claret, port, gin, whiskey, brandy, _liqueurs_, and mild ale:-- "To Twenty-one dinners, caviare, turtle, etc., 15s. each, £15 15s. 0d.; sherry, 16s.; hock, 50s.; punch, 7s. 6d.; champagne, 138s. 6d.; claret, 50s.; port, 25s.; mild ale, 1s.; liqueur, 20s.; coffee, 10s. 6d.; cigars, 64s. 6d.; soda, 22s. 6d.; gin, 2s. 6d.; whiskey, 15s.; brandy, 27s. 6d.; service, 21s.