The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-06-11 00:00:00

LORD DERBY ON CHARITY.

The Earl of Derby, after laying the foundation-
stone of the Stanley Hospital, on Monday, which is to
be erected in Liverpool on a site given by the late Earl,
made some remarks upon the sanitary ant social ques-
tions which arose in populous towns. Touching upon
the subject of public charities, the noble earl ob-
served :
It Is, I am afraid, indisputable that the difficulty of deal-
ing with individual po veriy and distress Is greater in a com-
munity of Borne hundreds of thousends than where each
family lives amoug a few neighbours, all of whom know and
are known to one another. Pers,nal sympathy and personal
acquaintance are thing. not easy to do without or to replace
In the relief of the poor; and in a great mercantile or
manufacturing conmmeity they will be rarer than else-
where, not assuredly bee fuse there is less benevolence, bat
because everybody has got his own business to mind, and
hardly anybody knows the name of his next-door neigh-
bour. You may, indeed, argue th at with so much wealth
and prosperity we ought not to hive Bo many poor: hut
unhappily that is not a conclusion that experience verifies.
Where there is drunkenness there will always be Improvi-
dence—generally pauperism, slat often things worse than
either and although we mey be mending in that respect
and I think, on the whole, we are—l am afraid It
most be admitted that we are still vary far from beteg a
temperate people. So, again, where nnakilled labour Is
much in demand, and where, as iu business connected with
Clipping end docks, a gout deal of hest demand is uncertain
and fluctuating, you will have, I fear, a class permanently on
the edge ef want. Let sanitarists do what they can—and
they CAR do much—to check the first growth of disease: let
educationists Rod social reformers exert themselves as they
will to raise the lowest cleas of honest labourers into abetter
peertion, we may feel qeite sure that as long as airy of us live
doctors will have diseases secure, and benevolent persons will
not want for objects of legitimate charity to assist. Well,
then, I think we may assume that if a hespital is a good
thing anywhere it will be a good thing here ;applause).
Of all human institutions a wed-managed hospital is one of
the least liable to abuse. 'there is absolutely no room for Ms-
postme about it. A patient has no motive for pretending to
be ill when he Is not, and if he were to make the attempt
he would probably NM Theo, again, though ausnost the ordi-
nary contingencies of life you may fairly expect even a poor
man to provide, yet the accident of being thrown for weeks
out of work, either by illness or casualty, and thereby
lolls g the means of meeting even ordinary expenses RE a
moment when he h as extraordinary expenses to incur, is one no
exceptional in its character auto justify the application of an
exceptionelreme-ly So again you may pattperise a men—that
is, you may teach him to depend on begging rather than on
working—by helping him over many difficulties, because many
difficulties are apt to recur, and with them recurs the tempta-
tion to beg: but nobody who has been treated for a broken leg
ever wishes to break it again merely for the ',leaser., of being
cured !laughter atol cheers) There is atilt another view of the
case—that by bringing together the sick and the injured into
one place you enormously CCODOMISB the valuable time of
the leading medical men, and therel-y greatly multiply their
power of work, besides setting up a school of medical science
which is a benefit, of course, to every class°, the community
hear, hear). But these thing,' are obvious, and I should not
touch upon them except for one season; but in dap, like
these, when there is—and I, rejoice to see it -great zeal
in the cause of the stiff :ring and the poor, but zeal not
always ecocalcanied by knowledge or judgment, and when,
accordingly, messy forms of so-called charity are all fat,
maey toeless and some absolutely mirchievous, we suffer
under a double danger. Men get fairly puzzled to choose
among all these. Thom who are naturally free-handed aid
liberal either shut their eyes and give blindly and indlscri.
minately to all, sir reluctantly abstain from givleg to almost
all from the fear that they will be doing more hares than
good ; and in that perplexity and difficulty, others of an
opposite turn of minsi Ilud ass excellent cacao for not help-
ing anybody except theimelves laughter.. It rooms, there-
fore, worth while to say, that if anyone feels he has a duty
to perfornt in the matter of giving and is perplexed in his
choice he cannot go wrong if he selects as the dispenser of
his charity a well-managed hospital in a populous town
(cheers).