io8 THE BATH ROAD 



very best quality ; but, uotwithstauding this elaborate 

 spread, tlie company, we are told, ate and drank 

 moderately, nor was there excess in any respect. 

 Before dinner, several paupers were examined, and 

 among them one most remarkably miserable object. 

 In about ten or eleven days afterwards, every one of 

 the company, except Mr. Pote, who had walked in 

 the garden during the examination of the paupers, 

 was taken ill, and five of them soon died. It was, 

 at the time, supposed that some infection from the 

 paupers had occasioned this fatality, more especially 

 as Mr. Pote, who was absent from the examination, 

 was the only person who escaped unaffected, although 

 he had dined in exactly the same manner as the 

 others. 



Some persons have compared this affair with the 

 mortality arising from the Black Assizes, but it should 

 seem, by another account, that these unfortunate 

 gentlemen had partaken of soup that had been allowed 

 to stand in a copper vessel, and that, therefore, they 

 died of mineral poisoning. They lie buried in the 

 little churchyard of Wexham, two miles distant, where 

 an inscription records the facts. That sad business 

 quite ruined the " Castle " Hotel. 



But all the Salt Hill hotels w^ere ruined when the 

 Great Western Eailway was constructed. The first 

 section was opened, from Paddington to Taplow, on 

 June 4, 1838, and those old hostelries at one blow 

 found most of their patrons taken from them. It is 

 true that this disaster had been impending since 1833, 

 when the route for the new railway was first surveyed; 

 but after the victory of the opponents of the first 



