MENTAL HOSPITAL ATTENDANTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXII, Issue 62, 11 September 1911, Page 3

MENTAL HOSPITAL ATTENDANTS.

TO *ES SMTOft. Sir.— l have to thank my frklid "Anthropology" for his powerful epistle of Sunday last, wherein, he quotes a lt?,t of the .salaries paid to the male st&ff at Porirua, where the head attendant receives a whole £145 per annum,, in return fox nine hours and more for every day in the year. I do not think there is a public officer ifl existence who has more worry to the square inch than the head attendant, who at some of out asylums have to do then- dispensing, etc.. Their duty, like their hours, are many, and like the farm managers throughout fcho service they receive all th« anathema but none of the kudo?. If a young chap joins the asylum service—where his environment subject* him id all the dangers imagkmble— he receives a salary of £77 per »jmnm. A tmifofm consisting of a grotesque liflfe cap (which allows the sun to add to his mental misery when he is beii»s» "talked at" by a hostile patient) and an equaily ridiculously constructed double-breasted coat, which he has to weai- unbuttoned in the hot weather,' antl 'which enables half a dozen patients to have hold of him simultaneously. The minimum salary for an attendant on our Stats farms—where they are only small boys to look aftef, and whef & no study is required—is £90 per annum. He is allowed three hours and a half per diem for meals. Now sir, how does, this compare with the asylum _ attendant, who only £|^^fr i2& JIB^a-Jra!! k°.u£s i» two.

days? "Anthropology" continues to refer to the attendants' seventy-six holidays per anmun. Does he not know that tradesmen, who only do tight hrmre, re- ' eive fifty-two Sundays and fifty-fcwo Saturday _ afternoons, which works oxtt at seventy-eight days per year. These figures, which do nob include the award holidays, computed on a. forty-five hour per week bads, give the trade'smc-n an average of six hours per day for every day in the year. The attendant*' actual duty, reckoned on a similar bas-i*., gives them an average of ovei nitl6 hours. The House allowance made to attendants is £20 per annum, and the majority of these married men, being formerly stationed at Mount View, found it very hard to live after contributing another £30 for rent out of their meagre salary. I have in mind an attendant who, upon being a^ked by a w«ll-kticwn contractor for ah explanation of his reiignihg from what he had previouely described as a good job, said, "I could nob stand the awful screeching in the middle of the night, and I didn't like one big unattended patient, who worked in the garden, who always chased me with a spade when theie were no other attendants about."'"! am, etc., It. 0. S'ULL'BROOK. Wellington, 6th September, 1911. [Tliis correspondence is now closed.]