New Home For The Quins

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30839, 26 August 1965, Page 1

New Home For The Quins

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 25. The Auckland Hospital Board will provide a recently renovated house—formerly a maternity home—at Henderson to house Mr and Mrs S. W. Lawson and her family, “for the next year or two.” The quintuplets will go home from hospital in four or five weeks.

The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) said tonight that permanent housing arrangements would be made later and for this the Government had in mind a financial arrangement which would be part gift, part suspensory loan and part ordinary loan.

Mr Holyoake said he wished to thank the Auckland Hospital Board for the trouble it had taken to make such “splendid interim arrangements.” Mr and Mrs Lawson were delighted, he said. The Henderson property had recently been renovated to serve as a hostel for convalescent children transferred from a Birkenhead hostel. This scheme would now be postponed for a year or two. The property was previously a large private home and later an obstetric hospital. The building included a self-contained flat upstairs and four bedrooms. Downstairs was adequate nursery and staff accommodation.

The arrangements envisaged by the Auckland Hospital Board were that Mr and Mrs Lawson and their five-year-old daughter, Leeann, would live in the upstairs flat, and the i

quintuplets would live in the nursery downstairs. Mr Holyoake said that, “in

principle,” it would be the Lawson’s home, “with Mrs Lawson in the normal relationship of mother to children."

The board had advised that in caring for the nursing and mothercraft needs of the babies, Mrs Lawson would have the help of Karitane nurses. Two would be on duty at all times initially. A domestic staff of two would also be needed to assist with household duties and to look after the family and the nursing staff. Medical supervision would be provided by the board. The family doctor would work in close collaboration with pediatricians from the National Women’s Hospital who had the responsibility of advising on the care of the quintuplets as long as that was necessary.