FRAY IN BUDAPEST HOSPITAL

Otago Witness, Issue 3331, 16 January 1918, Page 40

FRAY IN BUDAPEST HOSPITAL

A revolting story of three days' rioting and debauchery in a Budapest hospital is told by the Neues Wiener Journal. Some of the details given are too gross to be reproduced, but even thus Bowdlerised (says the Daily Express) the tale is sufficiently disgusting to indicate the disgraceful condition of affairs in the city!—"The St. Stephan a Hospital at Budapest was for three nights in succession the scene of wild orgies, m which figured the doctors employed on the staff and a number abandoned women and girls whom the former had met in the street and had invited to the hospital. Dr Karl Jelllpek andDr Emmerich" Landanei, two of the physioians in charge, spent a gay time witfi some friends in a well-known cafe. Afier closing hours, gathering on their way various male and female friends, including several gipsies, they returned to the hospital, where the first two nights were made/ hideous by raucous singing to an accompaniment of piano and flute. On the third night, when hosts and guests were all intoxicated, a frightful din arose. Bottles and glasses were smashed, and so were sundry human heads, andi chairs and even surgical instruments were freely used in a. fray which speedily devoloped into a raging battle, in which men and women participated with equal fury. In tho midst of the uproar the sick and their nufses left the _ wards, and some of the former', armed with fireirons and carpenters' tools, attacked the roisterers. The place soon had the aspect of a slaughter-house. When the police entered the buildjng there was blood everywhere. It was lying irt pools on the floor, broken tables and chairs were bespattered with it, a number of injured persons lay groaning on tho floor, while half a dozen women were lying' in a dead faint. Fourteen arrests wev6 made, but the two_ doctors and many of their guests made their escape by climbing to the roof of the hospital and leaping into the street from adjoining houses."