HOSPITAL MATRONS

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 27, 31 January 1917, Page 8

HOSPITAL MATRONS

. ; TO THB~EDITOK. Sir, —We are so heavily taxed for onf Charitable and Hospital- Aid Boards, surely it is a great blot on the.adminis- 1 tratioD there, when they allowed the late matron (Miss Payne) to retire after, twenty years of faithful service, with the munificent sum of £150. Miss Payne ,• gave always of her best ;\ trained "in tlie .;. Wellington Hospital herself, she v wa3 •a. \ fine disciplinarian, and all the hospitals'-. throughout the Dominion- recognise, ttiis. • Surely our Government Ministers^y.illj 1? note this, and see justice done, more e>l,i pecially as Miss Payne is now■lriri.jtyery'.- ■ ill health and ftleservmg of. every. sympathy. ■ When one walks around the Hos-' pital Grounds and'."observes"the-size'.pf the buildings, the distances to traverse between tlie various wards,' truly it might;, be said,. "What a change has .taker .. place during Miss Payne's term 6* office;';;.': Justice has not been done, for so splendid a life's record, in the one institution;-; and all women who know anything of a',,, matron's or nurse's daily life with the., .sick a,nd ailing must realise the strain.it is . bodily and. mentally, .day in .and day, , out, and, alas, six months', pay "does, not' compensate for twenty years' hard work. It makes one aek is "the ■ quality, of. ; mercy strained,"; and had it been,a man. . instead of. a woman.. would the same treatment be meted out?—l am, etc., : OBSERVER.