BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION

Evening Star, Issue 18057, 26 August 1922, Page 10

BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —X am pleased to see that there is at last a more than usual interest being taken in the old folk at the Benevolent Home, ■and I hope it will not drop until a vast improvement is made. The public has heard a little about tho food-—all too true, and that has existed for the last sixteen years to my knowledge. If my memory server! mo right one inmate, a well-educated man, has been there that time. I happened to get a position as cook there then, and there was a poor old snul—a woman —who used to like a small raw onion to help tho thick bread for tea, and I, not being of the hardest, used, against tho rules, 1 suppose, to give her ono. I was told that I was no good for an institution if I gave away to tho inmates like that—though plenty of onions were growing there. In another case an elderly men who had seen much betterdays and was dying of cancer had to come to tho kitchen for hi* ration of bread and milk. This particular morning ho begged mo to not to put bread in as his throat was very sore. I was told to tell him that if he did not take tho bread he would get nothing. Imagine me, having lost my father with the same trouble tho month before, telling that to a dying man! I could go on with my experiences there, but my referring to 'them is only to let you know that tho present conditions are no better than sixteen years ago. I thought time would improve such work, and on applying for and getting a position as laundress 1 again entered fcho homo. Now, can any reader imagine old men over seventy years of age, crippled with different troubles—some” paying in their little pension—being forced to go to tho washhouse early in tho morning, without a bite of food, and start carrying largo baskets of clothes and turning an old wringer, which I hope by now tho powers that be have had fixed. If I went to help them a little I was pushed out of tho road and told (hat they had not enough to do. Try, also, to imagine a poor unfortunate man getting dirty clothes! from a patient with some dread disease to wash first, and then, just in a piece of rag, bring to tbo washhouse to bo washed, where all tho other clothes are washed. I hope that has been altered, • but I think tho steriliser is the place for them. Cold inoat,_ no vegetables, no nice light pudding, thick bread, no nice cup of tea at any time! I trust that.with go many kind people about they will not lent until the old folk at the homo will get a. reminder of whnt that word homo should moan for tho short time that they aro here. —I am, etc., A Mother. August 25.