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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    Local Government Board, tliat no appointment should be made for more than five years,* so that a revision of salary, or an alteration in the areas of districts, mig’ht at these periods be effected where it was deemed desirable ; all medical appointments in one Union should terminate at the same date, intermediate appointments being held in accordance with this arrangement. When the present Poor-Law was enacted, and orders were issued by the then Poor-Law Commissioners, it -was indispensable that Medical Districts should be co-extensive with parishes; they were also made of large extent, in order that the aggregate salary should be sufficient to attract candidates where the local Medical Practitioners declined to apply for the office. But now that Union chargeability is established, and Medical Men have allowed their interests to overcome their prejudices, the time has arrived when the areas of districts may be revised with advantage, and Topo- graphical instead of Parochial boundaries be adopted. Under the existing arrangements Medical Districts frequently overlap each other, occasioning much unnecessary travelling to the Officer, and inflicting great hardship on the Pauper, who has to walk perhaps five or six miles to the surgery, when there is a Medical Officer of the same Union close at hand. Smaller Districts might also, in many cases, be formed with economical advantages, both as to labour and salary, as it is not unusual for a Medical Officer to have a part of his District four or five miles from his residence, but almost at the door of another Medical man ; of course he has no private patients to visit here, and, as a consequence, the pauper is neglected. In the Isle of Wight Union, the boundaries of Medical Districts are marked by roads or streams, and the arrangement is in every way an advantage over the plan adopted in almost all other places. A patent defect in the administration of the Poor-Law, and one by which the Guardians allow themselves to be hood- winked to the cost of the Ratepayers, exists in the present method of supplementing Parish Relief through the Medical Officer. At the Poor-Law Conference held at Oxford a short time since, Mr. Marsh, a Guardian of the Thame Union, stated * Since the above was placed in the Printer’s hands, we have seen an advertisement for a District Medical Officer, with the following condition : “ The above appointment will be made for a period of five years.”—Witham Union.—[C. H.j