THE TALBOYS HOME

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21988, 24 June 1933, Page 10

THE TALBOYS HOME

The Hospital Board will not be deemed by reasonable people to have displayed a lack of humanitarian feeling in not rushing to bring the treatment accorded the inmates of the Talboys Home up to the standard required for a removal of all the grounds of complaint that were preferred by Mr F. Jones, M.P. It is no doubt becoming in Mr Jones that he should display zeal for the well-being of his constituents in Talboys Home, but so far as his championship of the inmates has been concentrated on securing for them a three-course dinner it is scarcely of a kind that will be taken really seriously by the great majority of those who are rated to maintain this and other institutions. The question whether or not the average man or woman has, or insists upon, a threecourse dinner, is not in itself one to be answered off-hand. A good deal depends upon the individual. Mr Jones may hold strong views on the subject, but it certainly cannot be contended that a three-course meal is essential to adequate and palatable feeding and nourishment. It has been pointed out that, were three courses provided, many of the inmates of the Talboys Home would not partake of them —even Mr Jones would presumably hesitate to advise them to do so in the circumstances —and thus such provision would entail waste. The investigation of the conditions at the Home made by the Chairman of the Benevolent Committee, as an outcome of Mr Jones’s representations, seems to have been sufficiently thorough, and to have revealed nothing in respect of which the management of the institution need.be regarded as open to criticism'. The meals, it has been reported, correspond closely to the prescribed menu, which is by no means illiberal. The food is good, and apparently not lacking in quantity. Mr Jones considers that it should be more varied, but a deficiency of that kind, if it exists, should not be exceedingly. difficult to remedy. The use of straw mattresses has been reasonably defended. That the lot of those who reside in the Talboys Home is altogether enviable is not, of course, to be suggested. By virtue of its very character such a place tends to be cheerless. The institutional atmosphere is, of course,. inevitable, and in this instance the influences due to environment are no doubt the more difficult to combat because the building is a very old one and not of a type which the Hospital Board would contemplate if it had to provide a new Home at the present time. That its situation is ideal has never been suggested. But of ground of complaint respecting the treatment which the inmates receive there 'has been no substantiation.