MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 88, 30 January 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS.

" GkowleKS," as four-wheeled cabs are often called in London, arc said to owe their nan.e to the abrupt manners of their drivers, who are supposed to contrast unfavourably with the smarter and more up-to-date drivers of the hansom. A London paper states that so keen is the competition between member of the medical profession at the East End in particular,that many practitioners are reduced to accepting sixpenny fees, and low as these are, the existence and multiplication of hospitals and free dispensaries makes it very difficult for them to sain a mere subsistence. Some of them sadly admit that but for the occasional guineas they get for attendance at an inquest they would be forced to give up the struggle in despair. One fullyqualified medical man, who is said to have passed his examinations with brilliancy, has descended to a lower depth than • even the sixpenny doctor. He is settled in one of the poorest districts of St. Georgc's-in-the-East, and outside his surgery is painted, in hold Bomau letters : " Advice and medicine, 4id ; superior ditto, Gd." Where the three-half-pennyworth of superiority lies is a puzzle to the more thoughtful inhabitants of the district. Very- few people care to be left alone vt ith a corpse, but the experience, it apoears, is not altogether uncommon. At the Plymouth Board of Guardians complaint was made that when persons died at night in a ward the bodies were left till niorninz, although many inmates might be sleepiug in the same ward. The doctor said there was a role on the subject in existence in all workhouses and hospitals throughout the kingdom. If death occurred after eight o'clock, however many persons were in the ward, the plan adopted was simply to screen the body and leave it until morning. To leave the body was a much more humane manner of proceeding than to root out a dozen old men to remove it. The governor said he had known that house and the old one for three score ami ten years, and that had always been the rulp. In his opinion it was a much more decent arrangement than calling nut nine or ten old men to fetch the shell and remove tho tody. Slowly the evolution of domestic servants goes on. Ic is nearly impossible now (writes the London Daily Telegraph) to get a " general." The girls who formerly answered that generic description now insist on being called " ladies' helps " or " companions," or " domestic maids," and desire to be addressed as " Miss," to discard muslin caps and to wear hats—the larger the better. The Lambeth Guardians have been constrained to abolish " general servant " from their vocabulary, for the simple reason that no young woman would condescend to allow the term to be applied to her. " General servants " are henceforward to be known in the schools under the charge of the Guardians as " wardmaids." Girls like that description much better, as giving them a higher social status, the word •• maid" carrying with it a .Joan of Arc flavour which is absent from " servant,'' and is much more attractive. Tho matron states that when she advertised for " generals" she got only one reply, but when she asked for " ward-maids" she got twenty. Therefore an order has been made by the Board that in future they are to be all " ward-maids."