As the heavy door closed behind me it was securely locked by the ward sisters I walked slowly away up the long winding drive, averting my eyes from the inert lumps of clothing which seemed to litter the grounds. The words Itd just heard came again and again into my mind: "Got any ciggies, have you?", "Now you are a naughty girl. You mustn't cadgee" Could the nurse be talking to the woman of 40 I'd come to see? and why, anyway, was she reduced to “cadging"? Eventually I got around to finding out why. It seems that if you're on National Assistance when "outside" you cannot claim anything, except a rent allowance when you are “inside". No, not a prison! You've just been sick enough to get yourself into a mental hospital. If you have a fractured leg, appendicitis or tuberculosis you're entitled to 13/64 pocket money when you go to hospital (which may, of course, be sick pay or failing that,Nationel Assistance) but if you're,dare I say it, mentally sick, you are not. I railed against what seemed to me the inhumanity of such a decision thinking again of Mrs. Be, whose children were in the care of the local authority, whose daughter had almost driven her from her home and whose husband had deserted her. True, she wasn't much to look at with her scarlet lipstick splodged over her toothless face. When she was sick she'd drive us all mad with her daily demands for attention. Her intelligence was lowish and her two main enjoyments were smoking and wearing red! But why did she also have to suffer the indignity of being penniless too? At some point I realised with a shock that this could also happen to me. I am one of those late developers, a woman who started a career long after it was worthwhile to pay the full National Health Insurance contribution, Once the sickness period of six weeks was over (my employers! liability to care for me) I too could be on National Assistance and if the sickness were mental, I too could be at the mercy of...who or what agency? It seems however that we, Mrs. B. and I, need not be too downhearted for if we are fortunate enough to go to hospital A we are immediately assured of 13/6a from the hospital exchequer account. If we go to hospital B on the other hand, we may have to wait for a week or two when we may receive 1/64 per week (because the hospital hasn't revised its scales).
In most hospitals if we are well enough to work we may earn a little. If, on the other hand, we are not well enough we may in hospitals C and D receive something called "destitute money" or"indigent patients" allowance and this can vary from less than 5/- to 13/6d. If we refuse to work we may receive nothing at all. Wi decides? and what grounds? — It appears (and this fact may well be know to everyone but me) that “ Regional Hospital Boards and the National Assistance Board have a national agreement to delegate to management committees of mental hospitals to pay pocket money to patients, With this dekzation it seems that the National Assistance Board has given over to the hospitals the right to whether or not an allowance should be made to a particular patient. The same block grant has to cover money paid out as incentive to work and "destitute money". If there is a great demand for work then there's less for Mrs. Be and for me, that is if we can't or won't work. On the other hand, if there are more Mrs, B's then there is less left to buy carrots to dangle before the
Who decides? continued/
more active or co-operative patients, It seems a sad business and I for
one am trusting to be able to cope with my neurotic symptoms well enough
to stay outside, :
Mrs. B. in Ward X is locked ing I doubt if she'd ever have the initiative
to run away and she is certainly not violent, “he has to eat hospital food
at the time laid (and even the staff say it's not good). She gets up when
told, gets bedded down pretty early. She goes to Occupatiofil Therapy when
told, wears hospital clothing (inscribed with the name Jennie, which isn't
her name). Gets bathed when it's her turn. She even sits out, as a :
bundle of clothing on the lawn, when advised-to., Where does she have any
choice, except perhaps in the spending of 13/64 each week?
But someone, somewhere in that vast sprawling hiéous place may have already
decided that she is not fit to have any, or that she is not co-operative
and shall have only 2/6d, or that if she works in the laundry washing the
underwear of neurotic and soiling long term patients she may get 10/~
or 13/6d. ‘There is a vague disease in some hospitals about this national
agreement between the Regional Hospital Boards and the National Assistance
Board, but since I am told that it works fairly well, no-one wants to
complain (or maybe nobody knows how to complain), No one, that is, except
Mrs. Be and me,
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This 36-page pamphlet contains a very wide range of articles about the
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What_are we to do with the Public Schools, written by
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an exposure of The party iin our Party, which explains hows
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and over 50 other items,
Blackpool Brie*ing, 1965, will remainthe arsenal of facts, figures and
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