THE VERY POOR: HOW THEY LIVE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11046, 25 February 1898, Page 8

THE VERY POOR: HOW THEY LIVE.

Never, perhaps, was a year in which hospitals attracted so large a sbare-of pnbliq attention as they have done in the one which is now drawing to a close. To a great extent this has been due the fact that while national sentiment has. marked it as a year of jubilee—a year in which to celebrate the more than Jubilee of her Majesty's reign— the royal desire, as intimated by H.R H. the Prince of. Wales, has been that the celebration of the event should take the form of support to hospitals. Thus it has happened that a great deal of public interest has been excited in regard to these institutions—an interest which has not always shown itself in the form of 'a donation. Christmas time is a time when we should be in charity with all men, and when this charity should specially take the form of help to the feeble and the sick"; and at .this time in particular it; seems appropriate that we should again urge the.-claimßof the hospitals, and that we should -enforce attention to the fact that, notwithstanding all the talk about abuse and about reform, and notwithstanding that there may be some basis for believing that in certain matters hospitals, like, everything else, are capable of some improvement, they are in the main doing an enormous amount of good—good of a sort {hat cannot be done by any o.ther means, and in a way for which no substitute has been or can be discovered. The great central fact which has to be recognised is that the lives of the masses— „ the modes of life imposed upon great numbers of our f ellew citizens by the inexorable dainaads of what we are pleased .to call modsrn civilisation—are such that when they fall ill it is impossible, on the one hand, for them to provide for themselves the medical attendance that is necessary; and, on the other, for them to receive proper benefit from that attendance, even if it could - be had, so long as they, remaim amid the surroundings in which they have been-taken ill—surroundings which, in far too "many instances, have themselves bean the real cause of tha illness. Here and there a well-to-do, parson may gain access to a hospital and may cheat the subscribers; but that should not harden our hearts and close our pockets, for these cases are lost in the mass of the really poor and of the really deserving, for whom, if help is to come at all, it must come in the form of hospital treatment. . . Some of the tenements occupied by home workers are said to be filthy in the extreme, the. very dirt of the placss rendering it out of .the question to attempt to treat the sick in such habitations. " Armed with a box of matches and a. taper, and battling with what seem to be the almost; solid smells of the place,' one finally,reaches the top, and on being admitted finds a room almost destitute of furniture, the work lying in piles upon, the dirty floor or doing duty as bedclothes for a bedridden invalid and members of the family generally." It is obvious at the very first glanca. that it is impossible \o treat sickness amid such,conditions. ... •

Npw, has not all this a beariDg on what we so often hear about hospital abuse? Even if we were to grant all that is said against hospitals—a thing which we should not tbink.of dpirig for a moment —that would.not take away from the immensity of tbe real distress which hospitals alone are able to relieve. What, we have to bear in mind is that home workers are in very many cases among the most thrifty, the most careful, and the most honest of the'various classes into which we may divide the poor. Economically all sorts of evil things are said against them by the rest of the woiking community. It is said that it is the eagerness of the' home

worker for. work that keeps down wages, and it may be so ; but at least this is to be said, that it is by dint of what the world counts to them for virtues—thrift, sobriety, honesty, and punctuality—that they are able to • live a*s they do, t and at least the people who exercise these virtues, year in and year out, till sickness overtakes them, deserve something better than the workhouse when that dreaded event happens. Let us look at the household expenditure of a widow who has kept herself and little girl on Gj a week, " for rent and everything ": Rsnt, one room, 2s a week; £lh tea, 4-3; 21b sugar, 33 ; flour, l£d ;. oatmeal, 2Jd-.-^ib margarine, 3£d; six eggs (chipped), 3£l; ham, 2£d; coals, ,3d; onions, or other vegetarAes. l^d; bread, ;4id; "kitcheD," a term used to denote any little relish to make ■up a meal, 2d or. 3d ;—making a,total of about ..43 7d or is. 8d s. week; Again, take the de-tails-given by the wife of a cobbler earniDg • 13s a week, with four children—the eldest :11 years, the youngest eight months: Bread, 5Jd per day; tea and sugar, 3d; "kitchen,"id; milk, 2d ; butter, 3d; coals, Is 2fi per week; oil, 3d. She "counts on keeping the six of them on 15s from Saturday to Monday." Now, we ask, Where is the elasticity in such an expenditure? Where is the reserve to stand: the strain of sickness ? We answer that there is no elasticity and there is no reserve, and unless thrifty, carefW, ■ self-sup-porting working people lika these are to be thrown into the workhouse when ill, the hospitals are an absolute necessity in the present condition, of our social system.—Th« Hospital.