Hospitals : their funds and management, their abuses and remedies : with special reference to the proposed foundation of a children's hospital : a letter to Arthur Ryland, Esquire, Mayor of Birmingham / from a hospital surgeon.

  • Hospital surgeon.
Date:
1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospitals : their funds and management, their abuses and remedies : with special reference to the proposed foundation of a children's hospital : a letter to Arthur Ryland, Esquire, Mayor of Birmingham / from a hospital surgeon. 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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    by the monitor, “ Ways and means.” It is a great fallacy to regard the resources available for objects of public beneficence, as if contained in a reservoir capable of giving forth rills when- ever tapped. Let any one enquire of those who have the collection of the funds for the Birmingham hospitals, let him endeavour to ascertain the vast expenditure of money and labour which were required, on the part of a large number of the most influential ladies and gentlemen of this Borough, to get up the bazaar which resulted last spring in an addition of £1,000 to the funds of the Lying-in Hospital. Any one who looks at the facts impartially must admit that • it is more true to say the springs of charity lie very * deeply, under strata which require powerful boring tools to reach them. The stream does issue, but only after enormous pumping, instead of flowing, as suggested, in the pretty but illusory rill. * The position taken by Mr. Lloyd admits of statement in other words, and, I think, with even greater force. Within the last eighteen months the Boards of our two principal hospitals have made unprecedented efforts to increase the number of their subscribers, and to swell the donation lists. They have been aided by a marvellously Catholic appeal, from the Clergy of all denominations to their congregations, which resulted, on two occasions, in the aggregate amount of some- thing like £8,500. The whole has been absorbed by debt, and I believe I am within the mark when I put down at another £6,500 the debt which has accumulated between the two hospitals, since the first of the congregational collections was made in the autumn of 1859. What is even more noteworthy is, that the debt is increasing daily, nay hourly, and that, in spite of the exertions made by the committees of the two in- stitutions, on which sit a considerable number of the very best men of the town and district. Substantially, though in a less degree, the same may be said of .our other smaller charities for the relief of sickness. Under these circumstances, the