GOVERNMENT REFORMATORY FARM AND MENTAL HOSPITAL AT TOKANUI.

Waipa Post, Volume II, Issue 56, 27 October 1911, Page 3

GOVERNMENT REFORMATORY FARM AND MENTAL HOSPITAL AT TOKANUI.

The huge establishment which it is the Government’s intention to establish, in the Reformatory Farm and Mental Hospital at Tokanui, some seven or eight miles from Te Awamutu, has already been commenced by the erection of some necessary preliminary buildings, but the first big step will be taken with the commencement of the work, for which tenders close on the 29th November. This work —the first section of the Mental Hospital —• will involve an expenditure of from £15,000 to £20,000. The site of the proposed building is obout equidistant from Kihikihi and Te Puhi, and adjoins the site of the Reformatory Farm, the latter running two or three miles in the direction of Wharepuhanga. The main buildings of the two institutions will be some distance apart, but as time goes on will gradually extend till their outbuildings will almost junction. The intention is to provide accommodation by degrees, utilising the available labour of the inmates to provide for shelter for those to follow later. When the scheme is complete, there will be provision for between 2000 and 3000 patients, prisoners and attendants. This, of course, will take say five years to accomplish, but the work, owing to the cramped and crowded condition of the mental asylums and gaols of the Dominion, will be pushed on with all possible speed. The policy of the Government in this connection is to be most highly commended, not only from a business standpoint, and it is a sound one, but also from a humanitarian point of view. The main building of the work in question, which will be put in hand before the end of the year, measures 220 x I2oft, and forms a hollow square enclosing a drying green 134 x 60. This building includes the kitchen 42 x 30, immediately surrounded by the necessary storerooms. The patients’ dining-room is 48 feet long. There are two dormitories, one of which forms a wing to the main building, each over 60 feet long. Ten single rooms, each 12 a 8, open off an Bft corridor. The staff dining room is 20 x 16, and a commodious visitors’ room is provided immediately adjoining the matron’s private quarters. There are ten or a dozen bathrooms, while the ironing room and washhouse are each 60ft long. The day room is 60 x 20. which is a wing-, forms, with one of the dormitories, an enclosure 60 x 90, round three sides of which an eight-foot verandah runs, forming an open yet sheltered exercise ground. An attached building 90 x 30 contains, bakehouse, ovens, boiler room, coal stores, and two large bathrooms'containing eight baths, and two dressing rooms. One half of the structure will be in brick, the remainder in wood. As this work progresses Te Awamutu will correspondingly benefit. The impetus such an institution must essentially give to the trade of our town is incalculable, and will be one of the factors in an early and considerable increase in our population, a fact which must be borne in mind by not only those who have charge of the affairs of our town but by every resident when the matter of requisite conveniences—light, water, and drainage—are under consideration