KUMARA HOSPITAL AFFAIRS.

Kumara Times, Issue 2781, 20 August 1885, Page 2

KUMARA HOSPITAL AFFAIRS.

[to the editor.] Sir —ln your issue of the 10th instant, in your report of the Hospital inquiry, you publish a letter of Mr Monckton’a, in which he states that my brother John Nicholas applied for and obtained cheap medical attendance. As this is the second letter you have published containing the same, what I consider to be a falsehood, would you, in justice to the accused, publish this explanation and let the public judge whether Mr Monckton docs not stand condemned of a wilful perversion of the truth.

On the 13th November my brother.met with an accident while at work in his claim. As soon as he had recovered sufficiently, he came to Mr Monckton’s surgery to have his hurt attended to —not as a pauper, as Mr Monckton states, but as a member of the M.U.1.0. Odd Fellows, who were paying Mr Monckton for medical attendance when they required it. Mr Monckton knew he was receiving his (John Nicholas’s) money as an Oddfellow ; and an honourable man, I think, knowing such to be a fact, would not write such a letter as he did. But, on arrival at Mr Monckton’s door, he found it closed, and knowing that it was about the time that he usually visited the Hospital, went there and found him, and got his hurt dressed, but not as a pauper, as Mr Monckton says, but as the holder of a Hospital ticket. Mr Monckton cannot plead that he kid not know he was a ticket-holder, because he was cognizant of John Nicholas being a member of the Hospital Committee, and to qualify him to hold that office he must be a ticketholder. Certainly I think any man with a spark of honourable feeling in his heart would hesitate to brand a fellow-man with the stigma of “pauper” with the above fact in his knowledge. But that even was not enongh. Mr Monckton demanded and received the fee authorised by the committee to be charged in such cases as my brothers to persons not ticket-holders. Sir, I leave with confidence the public to judge between my facts and Mr Monckton’s statement of cheap medical attendance. Jas. Nicholas, Dobson’s Flat, August 18, 1885. P.S. My reason for not sooner giving this explanation is that I only saw the paper in which Mr Monckton’s letter appeared on Saturday the 15th inst. [Mr Jas. Nicholas is surely not aware that his brother J. S. Nicholas replied long ago to Dr. Monckton’s imputation. His brother’s letter appeared in the Kumara Times of the 9th December, 1884, and contained substantially all that is here set forth, and even more. — Ed. K. T.]