LONG SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26916, 30 October 1948, Page 8

LONG SERVICE

HOSPITAL SECRETARY

MR JACOBS RETIRING

A NOTABLE RECORD

Mr John Jacobs, the secretary and treasurer of the Otago Hospital Board, will enter on six months’ accrued leave at the end of the year, and will ofilcially retire from the service of the board at the end of June, 1949. When he retires, Mr Jacobs will have completed 57 years of public service m the city, 38 years with the Hospital Board, and 19 years with the City Council. Born in Dunedin over 70 years ago, Mr Jacobs has been closely associated with the two major public bodies in

Dunedin for the whole of his working life. In the early days of hospital administration in Otago there were five boards functioning, but under the Hospital and Charitable Aid Boards’ Act, 1909, these were amalgamated into the Otago Hospital Board, and Mr Jacobs became its first secretary, a position he has filled continuously over the years since May, 1910. During those years Mr Jacobs has acquired a great store of knowledge of hospital board administration. Today, with the exception of a woman employee still working in the laundry who joined the staff as a girl at the time Mr Jacobs became secretary, there is no one left throughout the hospital or on the administrative side who was there when he was first appointed. It is a far cry back to those early days in hospital administration when the allocation for maintenance was less than £IB,OOO. The total expenditure then was only £39,985, but to-day it is approximately £447,076. Maintenance to-day at £32,000 is nearly equal to the total expenditure in 1911, but now the hospital is a big modern institution with many specialised departments, and medical salaries throughout the board’s institutions total £33,000 in a year. In those earlier days the hospital had only 174 beds. To-day it has 400, and the number of patients has risen since Mr Jacobs became secretary from 2154 to 9302 in one year. Out-patients treated in a year have increased from 10.646 to 111,679. Mr Jacobs went to the Hospital Board as its first secretary from the City Council offices, where on two occasions he had been acting town clerk. Indeed, he was serving in that capacity in 1903 when the electric trams were first started. He joined the council staff in 1891 as a cadet in the Gas Department, and one of his first jobs was the reading of meters. Mr Jacobs was educated at the old Normal School, now the Education Department’s building, and later at Technical School classes.

Over the years with the Hospital Board the secretary has had only five chairmen, all of whom would testify to his quiet efficiency. When he goes on leave at the end of the year, Mr W. A. Williamson will be acting secretary until Mr Jacobs’s term officially expires.