HOME INMATE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 223, 3 September 1936, Page 8

HOME INMATE

Sent to Home at Wellington

DISPUTE SETTLED This morning’s mail train from Napier carried the inmate at the Macdonald Street Old Men’s Home who was the cause of the dispute between the Park Island Joint Committee and the chairman of the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board, Mr C. Lassen. The man is going to a home at Wellington.

Whether more will be heard of the question whether the Macdonald Street Home should be under the control of the Park Island Joint Committee or the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board remains to be seen. The next meeting of the Hospital Board is to be held on Monday, September 14. “Mr Rees (managing secretary of the Park Island Joint Committee) says that the inmate of the home is to go to the Salvation Army Home at Miramar, Wellington,” said Mr Lassen when questioned last evening. “At our conference this afternoon it was arranged that the man concerned should be approached to see whether he was willing to go to another institution. The matter was left to Mr Stein (another member of the Joint Committee) to look into. 1 was agreeable to this course being adopted, but made a stipulation that the inmate was not to be turned out until another place was found for him. The other members agreed that he should stay at the Macdonald Street Home under these conditions. I understand, however, that arrangements have now been completed, and he leaves for Wellington by to-morrow’s mail train.” The chairman of both local bodies concerned appeared to be quite satisfied with the result of the issue. Questioned yesterday afternoon, Mr Bedford said: “I gained my point that the man should not be allowed to remain at the home.” Mr Lassen said last night: “My stipulation that the inmate should not be turned out until another place was found for him was accepted by the other members of the committee. ” Consideration of the deadlock which resulted through the action of the manager of the Macdonald Street Home, Mr N. Blennerhassett, in favouring Mr Lassen’s ruling instead of Mr Bedford’s resulted In members of the Park Island Joint Committeq being called upon to give nearly four and ahalf hours of their time at two special meetings, one held last Wednesday week and the other yesterday. “I am very pleased that Mr Stein has been able to persuade that man to go to a home in ’Wellington,” said Mr Lassen, when interviewed this morning. “This is the very place that the committee set up by the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board to deal with this case asked him to go to. He, however, refused and was then placed in the Old People’s Home.

“As chairman of the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board I took a definite stand that: Firstly, the Park Island Joint Committee had no power to discharge a destitute inmate sent in by the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board from the Old People’s Home on to the street. Secondly, the Park Island Joint Committee has no power to prevent the Hawke’s Bay Hospital Board from boarding one of its inmates with Mr Blennerhasset.

‘‘ln agreeing to this man being put into a suitable place, with which I was in full accord, I did so on one condition, if a suitable place could be found for him. If not he was to remain in the McDonald Street Home and not turned on to the street. In this my object has also been achieved arid I bear Mr Bedford no ill-will. I am pleased that the matter has ended in this way.”