A VICTORIAN SANATORIUM.
REMARKABLE ALLEGATIONS
[By Telegraph.]
MELBOURNE, August 23.
Mr. Tanner, Police Magistrate, sitting as a royal commissioner, resumed to-day the inquiry into the allegations made in the legislative Assembly by Mr. Hogan, regarding the conduct of Greenvale Sanatorium, a Government institution for patients suffering from tuberculosis.
Florence 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-October, 1917, stated that when the milk used at breakfast was poured on the porridge it went sour. She had been told that the cream was sold to 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 patients constantly refused to eat it. Referring to the food brought by friends of patients, witness stated that the nurses were told by Dr. Brown to take those parcels away and not allow the patients to eat the “rubbish.”
Mr. H. S. Shelton, who appeared for Dr. Alfred Austin Brown, Medical Superintendent of the institution, put in as exhibits a long series of menus, which, he said, showed the food supplied to be more plentiful and varied than Mrs. Crooks indicated.
Frederick Hagelthorn, M.L.C., stock and station agent, having obtained permission to make a statement, said that he had received no presents from the sanatorium. Mr. Hogan’s charge to that effect probably has its origin in the fact that when he was ill last year Mrs. Brown brought out to his house at Malvern cooked fowl, and that when he was Minister for Health Dr. Brown brought into his office a few vegetables 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. He 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 that he had ever received from a public institution was a loaf of bread from the 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 Grimwood, a patient of the sanatorium for six and a half years, said that he once took a pair of fowls to Mr. Hagelthorn’s house. These fowls were not those referred to by Mr. Hagelthorn. They were taken out of the sanatorium poultry yards. He had seen a pair of ducks sent to Holmes and Dr. Robertson. He had seen 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 he did not get them. (Laughter.)
The inquiry was adjourned.
Source: Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton, Qld); Mon 26 August 1918 (Page 6)
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/53851577
Leave a Reply