EXECUTIVE MANSION, _August 4, 1886_.
_To the House of Representatives_:
I herewith return without my approval House bill No. 7234, entitled "An
act granting a pension to Susan Hawes."
The beneficiary named in this bill is the mother of Jeremiah Hawes, who
enlisted in February, 1861, in the United States artillery, and was
discharged in February, 1864. He filed a claim for pension in 1881,
alleging that in 1862, by the premature discharge of a cannon, he
sustained paralysis of his right arm and side. In 1883, while his claim
was still pending, he died.
He does not appear to have made his home with his mother altogether,
if at all. For some years prior to his death and at the time of its
occurrence he was an inmate, or had been an inmate, of a soldiers' home
in Ohio.
But whatever may be said of the character of any injuries he may have
received in the service or of his relations to his mother, the cause of
his death, it seems to me, can not possibly upon any reasonable theory
be attributable to any incident of his military service.
It appears that in July, 1883, while the deceased was on his way from
Buffalo, where he had been in a hospital, to the soldiers' home in Ohio,
he attempted to step on a slowly moving freight train, and making a
misstep a wheel of the car passed over his foot, injuring it so badly
that it was deemed necessary by two physicians who were called to
amputate the foot. An anaesthetic was administered preparatory to the
operation, but before it was entered upon the injured man died, having
survived the accident but two hours.
The physicians who were present stated that in their opinion death was
due to heart disease.
The above account of the death of the soldier is derived from a report
furnished by the Pension Bureau, and differs somewhat from the statement
contained in the report of the House Committee on Invalid Pensions as
related to the intention of the physicians to amputate the injured foot
and their administration of an anaesthetic. But the accident and the
death two hours thereafter under the treatment of the physicians are
conceded facts.