HOSPITALS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 523, 26 April 1872, Page 3

HOSPITALS.

If there is anything of which Englishmen are wont to be peculiarly, proud, it is the great Hospitals " supported .by voluntary contributions," of which the country is full. Yet even these noble institutions are, 'it seems, being so gravely misused as to be productive of evil. According to statements whiuh were deliberately made at a most influential meeting yesterday, the hospitals are not only pauperising the poor but are actually pauperising the rich. Mr. Farlie Clarke's statement that about a fourth 6 the London receive gratuitous medicine and attendance from dispensaries and hospitals obviously proceeds on a misinterpretation of the figure?. The 1,157 000 persons relieved annually are not each distinct individuals. As every act of relief is counted as a person relieved, and it is probable that most of the persons who get relief go for it again and again, the actual, number of persons whom those figures represent, large as it is, must be estimated at only a fraction—a fourth, a sixth, or a tenth- of the figures themselves. Mr. Powna'l'ssuggestiontbat thenumbcrofletters of recommendation should be counted instead of the gross attendance is a just one, and should be adopted if the figures aro to tell us anything worth knowing. The more startling factstell their story with far more directness. Mr. W. H. Smith said he had gone over the hooks of ono hospital aud .found twenty per cent, of the addresses to be fictitious. T)r Meadows stated that he knew eases where the wives of men with a thousand a year obtained this relUf and others in which the wives of people of good means disguised themselves in the clothes of their servants or brought leetters of recommendation iu order to get gratuitous adyleeand Dr Guy from his experienca cornfirmed thestatecuont. Whether the establishment of Provident-Pispensaries would cure this abuse .we can hardly say, It would, however, enable the independent poor to help themselves ; and as for well-to-do people who might still abuse charity, but one effectual means exists of dealing with them. Let their ' names and addresses be published, a';d of some lady taken in disguise be indicted for getting relief under false pretences, and even if the 'aw cannot punish the crime, society wilL London Daily 2f»cs.