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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 979, 17 September 1881, Page 2

We have had our attention drawn to an error which crept into our contemparary’s report of the Hospital Committee meeting on Wednesday evening last. The Treasurer is reported to have said that the funds in hand were £2O Os 6d, whereas what he really did say was that the balance was only £2 Ils 6d, that the £24 received by him for subscriptions had all been expended, and that the institution is in a most inconvenient state of impecuniosity, so much so that the Committeemen had to put their hands into their own pockets in order to meet current demands. This is not a creditable state of affairs ; and the aspect of the matter is not improved by the reflection that the backward state of the hospital’s finances is largely owing to arrears allowed to remain by patients —or their friends—who have had the benefit of the private wards during sickness. It is not in our province to cast reflections, or to write a word calculated to give pain ; but a sense of public duty urges us to say that no one should enter the private wards unless under some guarantee of payment ; and that, having enjoyed the additional comforts they afford, should, after convalescence, exert themselves to the exercise of a grateful requital for favors received. It must be remembered that our Hospital is sustained solely at local expense, although a fiction does exist that the Colonial funds contribute pound for pound, on the gross income ; and, such being the case it is more particularly the duty of those who have received there the comforts and blessings of a home, to remember this when health is restored, and the evil days come not.