The herald., 1895-12-15
County Hospital Quarters De-
signed for Suffering Women
AS A PRIVATE RESIDENCE
A Close Investigation Of the Conditions
at the Public Institution
Superintendent Family Housed In Rooms
Built for an Especial Purpose for Which
Proper Quarters Cannot Be Substituted

DR.. Barber should at once remove his
family and effects from the maternity
ward of the county hospital and allow
those quarters to be again used for the OBJ
jects and purposes for which they were
designed and built and for which the good,
hard-earned money of the Taxpayers of
this county is paid.
When several thousand dollars we're
taken from the county treasury and ex-
pended for the construction of the matern-
ity ward it was not intended that the rooms
secured by that expenditure should be used
as quarters for the superintendent
family. Those rooms were built
for the purpose of relieving the
suffering of women about to bring,
and bringing children into the world,
and with the special object in view of hav-
ing every condition that it was possible to
secure for them after they had successfully
passed through the severe trials of par
turition.
But the superintendent has deliberately
! usurped those quarters, and he evidently
intends to keep them unless the super
vsors direct otherwise. They are, of
course, the best arranged, the best lighted
and the best appointed rooms that can be
found at the hospital. They are really
detached from the building proper. and in
being thus cut off they are especially ia
vored AS long as the sun shines it will
enter those rooms. The noise and other
disadvantages of the main building of the
hospital are avoided by the inmates of
what was formerly the maternity ward.
The room at present used as maternity
room is ill adapted to the purpose. In the
first place, the sun can only get in
through two windows, and it can only fight
it's way in during few hours of the day.
tod md
four women are in there at one time, lying
upon those little iron cots, the atmosphere
must be close. 1t was bad yesterday
afternoon, when a reporter OF The
HERALD went through the rooms. There
were no sick women there then. but the
tients in the limited space 1t could not
have been otherwise than simply vile.
The room was not intended for the pur-
pose for which it 10 now used. 1t has no
accommodations and it is utterly impos-
sible to secure the sanitary conditions
which are desirable for patients about to be
confined and who are going through con-
finement. The rooms DR.. Barber's family
occupies were built for that purpose.
The doctor realizes that the complaints
that have been recorded in THE HERALD
against the present maternity quarters
were justified. He is now striving to make
changes which will improve the appoint
ments of the present maternity ward, but
it will be practical impossibility to make
the ward as complete as the old quarlers
were where the superintendent family
are now residing.
A door will be cut through wall and
another small room will be added to
the maternity ward. This added room
will be divided by partition that will en-
| tend to the wall, and these two rooms thus
! formed will be known as the delivery
rooms. When this is done these two rooms
will be like cells. Here women will remain
| twenty four to forty.eight hours after they
have been delivered. Then they will be
conveyed into the old nursery where there
! will be three cots. Here they will be cared
for until they recover.
| These improvements will decidedly help
out the maternity ward. They would prob
! ably never have been made had it not been
| for The HERALD's exposure of the -cOndi-
ton of affairs with regard to the subject.
| But DR.. BARRIERS family has the best rooms
| that can be secured. and with all the tin
lering that can be done the authorities cam
not transform any other rooms in the hos
| pital into a maternity ward.
| The supervisors pay DR.. Barber 500 per
month more than they do the superintend-
ent of the county poor farm. The reason
| that is done is because 1t is expected that
the doctor will be compelled to live in
a private residence, and special considera-
ton in point of added salary is therefore
| SHOWN ul1n livery preuecessor Oh tne uoc-
tors has housed his family outside of the
institution. DR.. Barber is the first superin'
tendent to usurp the maternity ward for
his private residence. 1t should not for
one minute be permitted.
There are 164 patients now at the hos
ptal and every nook and corner is oocu-
pied by suffering humanity. Room is
needed. If DR.. Barber must live at the
institution $50 a month can be taken from
hif salary, and cottage can be built fol
him on the grounds. But whatever is done
it is not right or just that the maternity
ward should be occupied as his private
residence.
alThe hospital is undoubtedly conducted
in manner highly creditable. 1t GER
tainly should be. There is, on an average