DEPLORABLE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1321, 27 December 1911, Page 4

DEPLORABLE.

GLIMPSE OF MENTAL ASYLUMS. (By Tclograpn-Prcss Association.) . Auckland, December 26. Mr. Ewington, official visitor to the Mental Hospital, reporting lo the Goveminent on tho overcrowded state of the institution, says:—"l wish the Minister (or the Department, with representatives of the Auckland daily press,; to accompany me over the 'Mental Hospital any night at, say, 12 o'clock, and witness a scene of horrors, consequent on the absolutely deplorable overcrowding. Even then they could not fully realise all. . . . The patients' beds nre laid on the floor in the passages against the attendants bedroom doors, and the smoll is repelliUß. The attendants have every night to lift the tables and chairs out of the readingroom to make up a Rood many shakedowns on the floor. Altogether there arc about fifty-six shakedowns on the floors in the passages and elsewhere. A current of cold air runs along the passages, and wo might ask ourselves how we would like to be put to bed under such circumstances, or how we would like to know that while wo enjoy a good bed at homo our wife, mother, or .father are forced to lie on the floor in a passage, such as is the case in the Mental Hospital." Jlr. Kwington urgently and solemnly appeals to the Government to act promptly and adequately in this matter.