More Particular Deaths
A death worthy to have been noticed with those on pages 179 and 180 was that of Mr. Douglas Hazle, a native of Hastings, and the son of Robert Hazle, a tailor, of 18 George street, who was referred to in the "Postman's" Rhymed Reminiscences as follows:-
"Of Ives I have treated, of Glanfield I've told,
And if I go back to an epoch more old,
R. Hazle, a tailor, appears to my view,
From erst 'Eighteen – eighteen to post 'Thirty-two.
And if it now needed your postman to seek
Dame Nature when being in mood for a freak,
He'd find it just here, in R. Hazle and wife,
Who seemed to exhibit reversal of life.
The fair-looking Robert had beard very thin,
While Robert's tall wife had a rough bearded chin;
And thus appeared Nature to alter her plan
To masculine woman and feminine man.
They moved to White-rock, there a living to get,
In not making clothes, but in lodgings to let;
And there they remained from about 'Thirty-eight
Till 'Fifty-and-three, or a few years more late."
The son, George Douglas - an acquaintance and occasional companion of my own – was a well proportioned good-looking man, who left home after he had passed his manhood’s estate and took service in the South-Eastern Railway Company. The following paragraph from the Reading Mercury will tell the rest:- "It is our painful duty to record the almost sudden demise of the much respected Superintendent of the South-Eastern Railway in this town. In the midst of life and apparently in the possession of a hale and vigorous constitution, this lamented individual, suddenly smitten with cold, which induced that formidable form of disease, erysipilus (sic), rapidly sank under its painful influence, the brain becoming the ultimate seat of the complaint. After great suffering, he was released on Thursday Nov. 8th from his earthly trials; and, passing thus away in the full strength of manhood, has given another awful instance of the frail tenure upon which even the strongest life is held – the vapour which so suddenly dissolves; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone". The great respect in which Mr. Hazle was so generally held, his quiet and assiduous attention to his peculiar duties, his affable bearing towards all with whom he was in contact -
