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nurse is obliged to be detained for special duty. It
is essential for health and the effectual performance
of their duties that the nurses should have at stated
times, a day off duty for change and recreation, it
being remembered that Sunday is a day of as much
work as other days, and therefore cannot be a recognised
"day of rest." The sudden removal of a
nurse and servant to attend upon a small pox patient
at once entails loss of time off duty on the whole
staff.
The day nurses go on duty at 8 o'clock in the
morning till 8 in the evening; the night nurses being
on for the other twelve hours.
The total number of the staff in the Hospitals
of the Metropolitan Asylums Board was 1,455, or an
average of 181 for each Hospital; at that rate we
should have had nearly a third of that number. In
making my comparisons with the Asylums Board, I
have assumed that the capital and interest account
was included in the statement of accounts that were
published in the daily papers, but I have not been
able to obtain positive information; one statement
that I saw in the British Medical Journal, of December
28th, was "According to the last Annual Report
of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, upwards of
£300,000 was expended in the year ending September
29th, 1894, on the isolation and treatment of
fever and small pox cases in their Hospitals," but
the total number of cases admitted multiplied by