Sick paupers and their medical attendants : an exposé of the fraud inflicted on the sick poor, and the ratepayer, in the employment by poor-law medical officers of unqualified assistants / by C.H.

  • Holmes, C.
Date:
1878
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sick paupers and their medical attendants : an exposé of the fraud inflicted on the sick poor, and the ratepayer, in the employment by poor-law medical officers of unqualified assistants / by C.H. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Skilled Medicine will, however, like sterling coin, always obtain a fair exchange, and seme time since, when the Wandsworth Board of Guardians wanted an Assistant Medical Officer, and advertised for one at £120 a year (equal to £2. 6s. a week), they had a single applicant, who withdrew before he had accepted the office. The Guardians at once saw the error they had committed and raised the stipend to £150 ; had the appointment been one where an Unqualified Assistant could have been employed, the applicants might probably have been counted in dozens. At the time when the Medical Districts were formed, and the salaries fixed—now some forty years since—the duties of the Doctor were undoubtedly heavy, but the “persistent” efforts of the Guardians to lessen Out-door Relief, and the improved earnings of the mechanic, and agricultural labourer, have brought about a very different state of things. In the Report we have before referred to, the Chairman at the Meeting, Dr. Joseph Rogers, made a statement to the effect that there had been since 1865 a clear gain to the Medical Officers of the metropolis of £17,000 a year, “for that sum had gone into their pockets.” Now we know that during that period a great diminution has taken place in the number of Out-door Paupers, so that we may calculate that their work has very much diminished. In many country districts the number of orders given by the Relieving Officer has diminished as much as eighty per cent., and we were assured by a Medical Officer the other day that the orders he now received were not one to six of those sent to him when he was first appointed. When, in 1854, a Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to inquire into “ the mode in which Medical Relief is now administered in England and Wales,” and recommended “ that every Medical Officer appointed after the 25th day of March, 1855, should continue in office until he may die, resign, or become legally disqualified to hold such office, or be removed therefrom by the Poor-Law Board,” we think it must have been unacquainted with, or overlooked, the fact that, in the great majority of cases, the Poor-Law Stipend does not exceed one- fifth, and frequently does not amount to one-tenth of the whole professional income of the holder of the appointment, and that the office is very generally applied for with a view to escape the proximity of an opponent, rather than with regard to the