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Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 59, 3 December 1926, Page 7

A contrast between prison methods now and in the old days was made by Mr. G. Cruickshank, S.M., at a meeting of the Prisoners and Patients’ Aid Society in Invercargill (reports the "Southland Times”). Youths sent to the Borstal Institution were not convicted; they were merely "ordered" to the institution, where they became not prisoners, but “inmates.” In the early days prisons became more or less pigsties, and convicts in their cells had their food thrust at them as though they were animals. In the Borstal Institution now the boys sat down together .nt clean tables, with cutlery and so on before them, and were waited on by several of their number. They were all very well behaved, and there was no chance of their becoming hogs through evil associations. “Teach a boy good manners, and the first step in the task of reformation is undertaken,” said the speaker. He added (hat a recent innovation in the life of the Borstal was a “pleasant hour" on Sunday, it cne time the inmates were locked up early on Sundays, and (eft to their own devices. Now they assembled and listened to addresses, not necessarily on religious subjects, or to music.

The recent appointments made by the Auckland Hospital Board of two honorary orthopaedic surgeons to deal with cases needing, treatment in this department of hospital work is, it is said, one of the wisest movements made in hospital methods for a long neriod (states the Auckland "Star”). Not only will there lie uniformity of treatment, but the patients’ stay at the. hospital will bo considerably reduced. This was exemplified at the meeting of the Belief Committee, when a young man who had broken his leg less than two weeks previously appeared on crutches, in the best of spirits, when members remarked that it generally took much longer than that before a man with a broken hmb was allowed to get out of hod. ‘ Oh, that’s the old method,” replied the young fellow who had met with temporary misfortune. "The specialists soon fix us up nowadays, and get ns to our own homes, where a complete cure tsoon effected, although we have to remain out-patients for some time.”