£100,000 WANTED FOR LIMBLESS MEN

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 96, 16 January 1918, Page 8

£100,000 WANTED FOR LIMBLESS MEN

DISABLED SOLDIERS WHO HAVE TO WAIT. To meet the needs of the growing number of soldiers and sailors who require artificial limbs, the Committee of Roehampton Hospital propose to purchaso and extend their present accommodation. At a Westminster meeting recently General Sir Francis Lloyd, the chairman, said that £100,000 was required for the purpose, and the committee hoped that every sympatheticminded man and woman in the Empire would subscribe to the cost. A hundred men a week, continued Sir Francis, were provided with artificial limbs, and since the opening of tho Roehampton Hospital in 1915 some 11,000 limbless officers and men from all sections of the Empire's forces had been restored to citizenship and industrial life. Disabled soldiers to the number of 2200 had found rituations after workshop training at Roehampton, and 6500 had returned to their old employments. There was a large waiting list of cases requiring assistance, and as the war proceeded the- number would increase.

To deal with them there would be decentralisation of organisation to other hospitals throughout the United Kingdom, with Roehampton as a sort of headquarters. Workshops and hospital accommodation at Roehampton must be extended to cope with growing demands, and as there was a chance of purchasing Roehampton House from Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Wilson, of Hull, the owners, he hoped the public would respond liberally, so that all our maimed heroes could he provided at once with the means of restoring them to citizenship and utility.

Colonel J. H. Opensliaw, senior surgeon at Roehanipton, said: "Roehampton has brought out a new artificial arm fot workmen whrt haw lost an arm above the elbow, and this will, in our opinion, in all probability revolutionise the arms which we have had up to the present. There is a man at Roehampton who can swing a 171b. sledge, hammer, holding it out at arm's length, with this particular artificial arm, he having lost his natural arm above tho elbow."'

Mr. Walter Lone: said that not only had they at Roehampton inmates from all parts of the British Empirq. but thny had workmen from the United States of America making valuable contributions to their production of limbs. . «