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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3207, 8 October 1881, Page 2

At the Hospital Committee meeting yesterday Mr Cotterill moved the following resolution:—"That all patients on entering the Hospital should be required to Bi»n a form stating whether they entered as paying or pauper patients." This resolution was passed, and we do not think that it will do the hospital any good. The word "pauper" is objectionable. The largest number of subscribers to the institution are the workinghands on the country stations. Their subscriptions of one. guinea a year entitle them to be received and nursed at the hospital free of charge. In the event of an accident or of illuess happening to one of these men, and necessitating hospital attention, is he to be required to sign this form stating whether he is a pauper or a paying patient ? What has he, and many more like him, been subscribing for? The attempts that have been made from time

• • time to turn a public institution into a private boarding-house, or h sort of aristrocraticsanitorium, are not encouraging features in the management. Abuses spring up by degrees, and bo we strike now at a resolution which, by careless supervision of the visiting committee, may be made an instrument of injustice. We can imagine that, on the arrival of a patient af the door, his appearance will be scanned through the window; if he looks a paying patient, and one who will fee the attendants, nothing would be too good for him. Tf. however, he looks a " pauper," and fills up a "pauper form," he may be tumbled about roughly, regarded as a nuisance, and generally neglected. Yet that man may have been a subscriber for many years, and though not on admission prepared to pay as a boarder would, on recovery, be only too glad to save out of his earnings to pay for the attention and kindness he had received while in the hospital. No person on " entering " the hospital should be agitated by a request to sign anything; but on being restored to health there can be no harm in getting him to sign any sort ot form that may be required for the proper conduct of the institution.