THAMES HOSPITAL.

Thames Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 1850, 5 September 1874, Page 3

THAMES HOSPITAL.

To tho Editor.of the Thahes advertiser. ■ Sib,—l say nothing about the documents from doctors and warders in your columns to-day. By all means let every facility be given for ascertaining the truth in Mr Power's case. The subcommittee I have no doubt will successfully defend their report. My object in writing is to indicate my strong disapprobation of tho uncharitable statements you have made in connection with the case. Yon think it is reasonable and proper that meanwhile the public should suspend their judgment on the merits of the case. It is a pity that as part of the public you did not take the advice to yourself. After giving it you attack the sub-committee as if they were wrong; and not-only so, but as if they had deliberately done wrong. You say," The case as it stands looks too much like a case of special pleading by some one anxious to bring home a charge of inefficiency and negligence." You say it is" A one-sided and garbled report." And " The question is one which may involve a withholding of support to the institution unless it be fairly and fully ventilated without reference to prejudices or any attempt at a combination to secure certain ends." If you do not know, let me tell you that the men composing the sub-committee are above a " combination" for any unworthy purpose. It is a deep disgrace to the Thames, and all the deeper because a newspaper leads in the direction, that men cannot touch public matters without the very worst of motives being attributed to them. For myself I have to say that when I was appointed a member of the sub-committee I had not a vestige of knowledge of what was in the case; and because my convictions have taken me in a certain direction, I must submit to have any amount of dirt thrown at me by the editor of the Thames Advertises. Here is the sentence that touches ma specially —" The report prepared by the Chairman, we are told, was not read over to the members of the sub-committee for their final concurrence; so that the charge of distorting evidence may yet be backed up by members of the sub-committee themselves." The fact is that the report was composed and'submitted and adopted by the sub-committee on the Tuesday evening, and that I got the work of re-writing it, that it might be fit for the Press. The committee had confidence in me in the process of rewriting, and it was not again to be submitted to tbe sub-committee. For the supposition that I could get a committee to adopt evidence, and then go home and, in the process of re-writing, distort it, I have simply to say that I am extremely obliged to you. That I ever did this in any case, you cannot say; and whether I have done so in this case, the following document will shoff.—lours, &c,

James Hill.

At the request of the Her. Mr Hill we, membors of the sub-committee, went over clause by clause the report adopted by the gub-committeo and the report road by Mr Hill on and havo to say that thero is not tho slightest distorting of evidcnoo or of the discussions come to by th« sub-committee. There are only two differences. First. In the report on Wodnosday thero is omitted a statement by Thomas Taylor, viz,," I have seen the bnndagos off on several occasions." This omission Mr Hill attributes to the hurry in which ho had to re-write, and as the statemont tells against the Hospital management, you will admit it is in the opposite direction of the process of distorting of evidence. The other difference is in tho insertion of the following words in regard to the taking off of the bandages:—" It does not appear that the doctor was aware of this, nor is it certain Mr Aitken was; but both warders were fully cognizant of it." From a statement made by O'Oonnell, Mr Hill was right in putting in these words. But as the insertion was in favour of Aitken and very niuoh in favour of the dootor, you will admit that this also was very far in the direction opposite to a distortion. With these two exceptions the two documents are the same, and wo consider the supposition in your remarks this morning as simply disgraceful, One of the members of Committee is in Auckland, but on his return the two documents will bo again gone over olauso by'clause.—William I Soutek, Htoh Mollhqne, John Übato.

[Mr Hill is naturally indignant that we should have taken his report to task instead of allowing the matter to pass over in silence, and he even accuses us of uneharitableness in so doing j nay, he goes farther, he induces three of the sub-committee to say it is simply disgraceful. Eeally, we hope we shall survive thiir displeasure. We are glad that Mr Hill takes some of the opposition to 'the report as levelled against himself, and note the pains he takes to ward off the blow. Wei will, however, repeat the substance of the charge we made against the decision of the committee as embodied in the report, which Mr Hill now assures us was not even " composed" by him. We say there was a charge that wrong inferences had been drawn from certain points in the evidence, and this was stated by Mr Renshaw at the time the report was laid before the committee, hence the grounds for saying that the evidence may have been distorted, which nearly all those interested in the case confirm by stating that " the evidence set forth in the report is both incorrect, incomplete, and calculated to convey false and erroneous impressions, because material evidence, pointing to conclusions contrary to some of those given in the report, is not alluded to." Added to this, we have the assurance of the Hospital Surgeon himself that the re» port has been arrived at as much by the suppression of what is true as by the suggestion of what is false. What we most objected to was the hole-and-corner pro. cedure of the sub ■ committee, who, instead of permitting each man's testimony to be taken down by an accredited peraoa and read over to him, or of allowing the representative of this journal to remain . at the iuquiry in the interest of the public, I acted very indiscreetly in allowing each to take down what interested him most, and compiling the report from mere jots and tittles of evidence. The copy of- the report itself will show the numerous alterations and interlineations there are in what professes to be evidence adduced. Mr. Hill throws some of the blame .intended for him on to the committee, or at least such of them as will father it. 'We never accused them of deliberately doing wrong, far from it: the special pleading we alluded to is on the part of Mr Hill, and the combination is with' -Mr Mcllhone, hence the trouble taken to explain away fancied accusations. It is not impossible that members of the subcommittee may have been misled, and had a bias given to their conclusions, by the specious arguments of some of their number. People should not so glaringly lay themselves open to : i charges '■ of motives. We do : not want Mr" Hill to submit' to any dirt that may be thrown, but some of it will stick-you cannot touch pitch and be undefined. We never acoused Mr.Hill of distorting the report .when rewriting it, and he is only trifling with the mutter in this part of his communica-, tion The trio who form a part of the. sub-committee need not assume so much, virtuous indignation, because their communication serves only to confirm all that has been said bygivingtwoinstances where the statements made are found to differ, thereby acknowledging the charge they are so anxious to disprove. As guardians of the public interest we felt it our duty to point out anything that was calculated to inflict an injustice upon any person connected with so excellent an institution, and whilst we were anxious that the public judgment should be suspended in the case, in compliance with the wish of those most personally concerned, we were anxious to show some substantial reasons for the request.—Ed.]