AN OVERCROWDED ASYLUM

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14809, 12 October 1911, Page 8

AN OVERCROWDED ASYLUM

NEW BUILDING TO BE ERECTED

TO BE READY IN SIX MONTHS.

The recent disclosures in regard to the overcrowded . condition -of the ■ Auckland Mental Hospital forced a neglectful Department to action. * Now, as a result, plans and specifications have been prepared for additions, and tenders close for the contract on November 20. It is expected that a new block, with provision for a resident superintendent, a matron, nurses, attendants, 49 male patients, and an equal number of female patients, and erected on a site about half-a-mile from the present asylum, will be finished in six months' time.

The building will be erected on strong concrete foundations, with base walls of stone, wood above, and corrugated iron roof. The rooms will be served by long corridors, the width of which will be 7ft 6m, and the provision for ventilation and light : and space will be on an adequate scale. .In the female wing, which runs out from the nurses' quarters, there will be 39 single bedrooms, each measuring lift by Bft, a dormitory 35ft by 20ft for the. patients, a dayroom 70ft by 36ft, a diningroom 32ft 6in by 24ft 6in, bathrooms, storerooms, lavatories, and a. padded room. At the base of the wing with the nurses' quarters, bedrooms, a diningroom 30ft by 16ft, a female visiting room 29ft 6in by 14ft 6in, a male visiting room 22ft by 16ft, storerooms, sculleries, kitchen, boilerhouse, dispensary, and attendants' ci JKunnmg in a wing away from these quarters, and at right angles to the female wing, will be the male wing. It will contain 39 single rooms lift by Bft, • a dormitory 20ft by 35ft for ten persons, a diningroom 32ft 6in by 24ft 6in, a dayroom 70ft by 36ft, and various other rooms as in the female quarters. Right at the other end of the nurses's-room portion of the building there will be a block of rooms measuring 35ft by 34ft t This block will be two-storeys high, the ground floor being for the matron and the first floor for the superintendent. By itself there will be an attendants' block, two-storey high, measuring 27ft by 44ft, and with 42 bedrooms. : : •