There is no politer word.

Ten years of it broke his heart, and broken-hearted men cannot live.
He took to his bed in his terrible den, which grew more terrible with his helplessness.

He was without kith or kin, a lonely old man, embittered and pessimistic, fighting vermin the while and looking at Garibaldi, Engels, and Dan Burns gazing down at him from the blood-bespattered walls.

No one came to see him in that crowded municipal barracks (he had made friends with none of them), and he was left to rot.
But from the far reaches of the East End came a cobbler and his son, his sole friends.

They cleansed his room, brought fresh linen from home, and took from off his limbs the sheets, greyish-black with dirt.