LADIES’ CORRESPONDENCE COLUMN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 10, 7 March 1891, Page 15

LADIES’ CORRESPONDENCE COLUMN.

PUT LADIES ON HOSPITAL COMMITTEES. TO THE EDITOR. SlR,—Kindly permit me to call your attention to a sphere of work eminently suitable for ladies, but at the same time unremunerative, wearisome, and thankless. And yet, despite these drawbacks, there are good, practical, devoted women who would be willing and could afford to give up the time necessary for the work. My attention has been specially called to this subject at the present moment by two things : First, the little affair at the Auckland Hospital : second, an article in the Nineteenth Century for December, entitled ‘ Women as Public Servants.’ I do not apologise for bringing this matter before your readers, for surely, if a magazine like the one mentioned thinks the matter of sufficient public importance to be paid for handsomely for publication in that paper, the Graphic may well devote a few lines to its consideration. Allow me to make a few extracts. *We feel surpiised that so many essentially womanly duties should hithei to have been perfoi med by men alone—duties which we have no hesitation in saying would be scorned by them were they asked even to give an opinion on them at home. ’ The writer adds : ‘ The following are some of the important questions that come befoie the male guardians :—The selection of a dress material for the nurses, the choice of marking-ink (with an inspection of articles of linen marked), the respective merits of crockery rers«.v metal pie dishes ; besides an examination of various garments from the laundry.’ etc. Now, sir, f venture to say that, for duties like these, a ladies’ committee for refuges, hospitals, lunatic asylums, and similar institutions would be most suitable. How can a man tell whether the rooms, food, and patients’ linen are kept in proper order? In a lunatic asylum especially, where the female patients are so much left to the care of attendants, who, says our author, ‘as the work is unquestionably demoralisingsoonpick up bad language from, and use it to, the patients, I am quite sure that there ought to be lady inspectors also, visiting, like the magistrates, with full power to question and examine.’ Noone ought to have this power without special training. How can a business man, freshly appointed to a, say, hospital committee, who has no technical training of the kind necessary to tit him to discharge his duties propeily, profess to know the best system of management? How can he tell if the female patients, for instance, are being properly looked after ? And the poor little ones, who would be far too much afraid of the ‘ Board ’ to make any complaints, are they to be left to the kindness, or the reverse, of hard-worked nurses? A ladies’ committee composed of suitable, ex]>erienced women, with some idea of nursing added >o their practical knowledge of housework, etc., would lie of great assistance to any of the above mentioned institutions. <if course, their duties must be cleaily defined, and on no account must they interfere in any way with medical ordeis. Tact and judgment are particularly necessary, and, as a rule, women possess these qualities in far larger measure than men. Dublin and Belfast Hospitals each rejoice in a ladies’ committee, the woi king of which, 1 am told, is most satisfactory, ami a clergyman informed me just now that at Brisbane the Children’s Hospital is managed by a ladies' committee, who are subject to the medical man, and the arrangement works harmoniously and well.—l am, etc., Jolt the Good of the Patients.