An account of the condition of the infirmaries of London workhouses / [Ernest Hart].

  • Hart, Ernest, 1835-1898
Date:
1866
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An account of the condition of the infirmaries of London workhouses / [Ernest Hart]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    JO authorities who govern these institutions have not yet been awakened to even a sense of their deficiencies, and have for the most part turned a deaf ear to remonstrance; nor is it hopeful to find that the requirements of the Poor-law Board are so considerably below the acknowledged standard of sanitary law. If we pass from the review of the constructions now used for infirmary buildings by the metropolitan unions to the investigation of their interior arrangements, we shall find them present yet greater contrasts with the ordinary standard of hospital care and varieties inter se. To speak first of the medical attendance. The duties assigned to the medical officers are frequently such that the exertions of two or three properly remunerated persons, whose time should be wholly given to their performance, could hardly perform them adequately. I desire to speak with all respect of the medical officers. Assuredly no more hard-working and ill- paid officials exist in this country. But I do not hesitate to say that the medical attendance supplied to the sick poor in the workhouse infirmaries, as compared with that winch they get in the hospitals of the metropolis, is, to speak plainly, and regarding these infirmaries as a whole, painfully insufficient. At St. George’s Hospital, for example, with 350 patients, there are four surgeons and four physicians, who each pay an average of three visits a week; there are twro resident apothecaries, three resident house-surgeons, and a dresser for each surgeon. At St. Mary’s Hospital, with 150 patients, there are three physicians in ordinary charge of in-patients, three surgeons, four resident medical officers, and three dressers. Now let us take examples of the provision made at union workhouse infir¬ maries. In the Strand Union, for the charge of nearly 200 persons acutely sick and 400 infirm, one medical officer only is employed. The salary which he receives is so absurdly small, U105 a year (he being expected to find the majority ol the drugs), that it is of course necessary, and it is ex-