The Warminster Herald, Saturday 23rd May 1868, reported:
For several weeks past a most singular case of illness in the workhouse at Warminster has been attracting the anxious attention of the medical gentlemen of this town. The facts of the case are briefly these – On the evening of the 9th of April a tramp was admitted to the casual ward, and on the following morning he again started on his course. Very soon afterwards he was taken back, being unable to walk, and the attention of the doctor, P. Grubb Esq., was called to his case.
Soon afterwards his extremities became discoloured, and in time his nose, hands, and feet grew quite black, and the flesh begun to fall away, becoming quite dry, and leaving the bones and sinews the same. He gradually got worse, and on Thursday, 16th inst., had one of his arms taken off. It is expected he will shortly be compelled to have the other arm as well as both his feet amputated.
He has been visited by two most eminent physicians, who say, as do our local medical men, that they never before saw such a case. About four years since the man was in in the Hasler Hospital, when he suffered severely from frost-bite.