PLUNKET EFFORT

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 69, 14 December 1933, Page 8

PLUNKET EFFORT

Sir Truby King’s Appeal TO-DAY’S COLLECTION Past Public Generosity “Throughout the 30 years of its history, more than 90 per cent of the money needed for conducting the Blanket Society has come out of the pockets of the people who have not reaped a penny directly or indirectly for themselves,” said Sir Truby Kill* yesterday, in making an appeal to the public to support generously to-day’s street collection in aid of the funds of the society. "It is easiest for me to speak of only one man in this connection, because I came to know him very intimately as Minister of the Department of Child Welfare under which I was placed. In 1912, I was sent o London as plenipotentiary by the Conservative Government of the day, and on reaching London received a letter from Sir Heaton Rhodes, Minister of Health, enclosing his private cheque for £lOO. He wrote, ‘I know you will be expending far too much of your own money in this work, and I should be glad to let you have whatever you may need.’ However, I. did not need to avail myself any further of Sir Heaton’s generous offer, because his £lOO enabled me to employ two highly capable and efficient trained nurses for four months, while my wife and I devoted the same period to unremitting work in the most squalid region of Whitechapel, the extensive Brady Street area, which was then condemned to be entirely pulled down by the London County Council. “This investigation and research not only threw a flood of light on the swarming submerged population of London; but is equally Illuminating for our New Zealand work, and was indeed comparable in Its-practical bearings to the work of Helen Easterfield, now Mrs. Easterfleld-Deem, both before and after her appointment under the Lady King Scholarship. “T feel compelled to say a few words about the pitiably tragic and sudden death of Miss Mitchell, occurring, as it did, unknown to any of us when the Plunket Society’s fashionable annual ball was at its height. But for overwork, Miss Mitchell might have continued happily in harness for many years. My only purpose in referring to this painful matter is the fact that a similar fate may and probably will, in my opinion, overtake some of our present splendid staff of Plunket nurses if we allow them to overwork in the way they are now doing. I repeat, in the words of Sir William Hunt, that this is unthinkable and must be prevented.”