QUAIL ISLAND.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18016, 7 March 1924, Page 11

QUAIL ISLAND.

TO THZ EDITOR 07 "THE PRESS." Sir, —Being a frequent visitor to Quail Island, I was interested by what Mr Macartney said at the meeting of the Lyttelton Harbour Board about the Stock Department and the Health Department. Why cannot both groups work amicably side by side? There is plenty of room for the two. I t.Viinlr that it would be a great cruelty to the patients to 6hift them elsewhere without sufficient cause. Where they are they can see their friends, and so feel less like outcasts; also they have a church service once a month, and listening-in when they feel lonely. That is the humane side: the other side is the expense of shifting, each pauent having his own little

house, whicli of course would have to be ))iirned down. We who have the blessing of henlth and our freedom must try to, realise the condition of these poor people. The danger cannot be so great, or their medical officer wouldn't allow visitors. All the Stock Department can say is

that while the leper patients .are there they cannot keep a man over there, hut I think if it were enquired into one would find that not one servant of the Stock Department has left for that reason.

Perhaps I am prejudiced in the patients' but if so, it is because Tam so sorry for them. I think that if the two Departments would meet and talk things over, they would bo convinced that both could Jive quite' well on the island if they so desired.— Yours, etc., «. TRRDETMNICK. March '6th, 1924.