POULTRY FOR A MINISTER.
MELBOURNE, August 23.
Mr. V. Tanner, P.M., sitting as a royal commission, to-day resumed the enquiry into the allegations made in Parliament by Mr. Hogan, M.L.A., regarding the conduct of the Greenvale Sanatorium, a Government institution for patients suffering from tuberculosis. Florence A. Gillon, who was a patient between January and June, 1917, said that after the first fortnight the meat was always flyblown during the warm weather. Mrs. Dora Jean Crooks, who had been a nurse at the sanatorium for five months from September, 1917, stated that when the milk used at breakfast was poured on the porridge it went sour. The probationary nurses used to say that at dinner time they had to water the milk to make it go round. She had been told that the cream was sold to the dairies. In her opinion the patients did not get enough nourishing food, and there was not sufficient variety. Owing to the meat being flyblown in the hot weather, many of the patients constantly refused to eat it. Referring to food brought in by the friends of patients, witness stated that the nurses were told by Dr. Brown to take these parcels away and not to allow patients to eat “rubbish.” When Dr. Bird was superintendent there was enough milk to go round without the addition of water, plenty of vegetables, a variety of puddings, and honey and jam. When Mr. Brown took charge the supply of milk and meat was cut down, and the honey and jam was stopped.
Mr. H. S. Shelton, who appeared for Dr. Alfred Austin Brown, the medical superintendent of the institution, put in as exhibits a long series of menus which he said showed that the food supplied was much more plentiful and varied than Mrs. Crooks had indicated.
Frederick Hagelthorn, M.L.C., stock and station agent, having obtained permission to make a statement, said that he had received no present whatever from the sanatorium. Mr. Hogan’s charge to that effect probably had its origin in the facts that when he was ill last year Mrs. Brown brought out of his house at Malvern, a cooked fowl, and that when he was Minister for Health Dr. Brown brought into his office a few vegetables worth, perhaps, 6d. or 7d. as specimens to show him what could be grown. When Minister for Agriculture he had often had similar specimens brought to his office. On another occasion Mrs. Brown took out to his house a pair of ducks. Me was not at home at the time; but in any case he would have accepted the present, because he took it that the ducks were Mrs. Brown’s private property. The only other gift he ever received from a public institution was a loaf of bread from a gaol. (Laughter.)
Dr. Brown confirmed Mr. Hagelthorn’s statements. The vegetables given to Mr. Hagelthorn were grown on the institution’s land, while the poultry was the private property of Mrs. Brown.
Daniel W. Grimwood, a patient of the sanatorium for six and a half years, said that he once took out a pair of fowls to Mr. Hagelthorn’s house. The fowls, which were not those referred to by Mr. Hagelthorn, were taken out of the poultry yard of the sanatorium. He had seen a pair of ducks sent to Mr. Holmes and Dr. Robertson. He saw clothing in Dr. Brown’s own house in a tin trunk. There were suits of clothes, collars, pyjamas, and so on. Nearly all were marked “Gunnersen.” He was promised a suit of clothes and two silk shirts by Mrs. Brown, but did not get them. (Laughter.)
Source: The Register (Adelaide, SA); Sat 24 August 1918 (Page 8)
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/60377001
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