DOWN AND OUTERS.

Grey River Argus, 21 June 1927, Page 6

DOWN AND OUTERS.

LONDON. Juno 1. The “Black List of Bart’s” is a secret and formidable volume locked up in one of the doctor’s rooms at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London. It, contains the names of tin' city’s most notorious shammers. “ ‘Down and outs’ come to us and try and got a night’s rest by flase produces. If they succeed they invariably, throw their medicine down the sink. They do i not succeed often,” said one of the hospital siaff to an interviewer. “The same people come back time after time, and in the end we get to know them Once their name is on the ‘Black List’ all is up with them. Women are usually more persistent than the man. but even women are handicapped by the tact that yau can act a part but cannot act a symptom. The police sometimes bring us mon who have been lying in the streets in a state of pretended collapse, but that does not happen often because the police know almost as well as we do who are the shammers. The most amusing incident 1 remember is that of a man who shammed an epileptic fit in the sf reel. He appeared to have all the symptoms. A doctor was sent for. He ordered straw to be fetched, and the man to be placed on it. ‘Now set fire to the straw!’ ordered the doctor. The man got up and ran. He must have covered the first hundred yards in well under even time.”