Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 56, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 March 1912 — RED TAPE RULES IN LONDON [ARTICLE]

RED TAPE RULES IN LONDON

Man Who Fell Into the Thames Refused Admittance to Police Stations and Hospital. The complaints made occasionally in New Tork of the refusal of hospitals to admit emergency patients, some of them in desperate plight, are brought to mind by the experience of a London man who fell into the Thames the other day. In New Tork the explanation his been that the hospitals refusing to treat patients were overcrowded and it was impossible to accommodate another applicant for admission. In the London case red tape appears to have been responsible for the denial of suocor to the man who took an involuntary bath in the icy waters of the river. Nothing In the testimony on the subject of the shivering unfortunate’s treatment Indicated that there was not plenty of room for him in which to get warm and dry his clothes. The story came out in a police court, when a young laborer was charged with breaking a plate glass window in the Salvation army shelter In Whitechapel road. The accused testified that after he pulled himself out of the river he had applied at two police stations for permission to have his clothes dried, and was referred to the casual ward -of a hospital, but an official there would not admit him because he had no order. It was then early on a December morning. According to the testimony of a night watchman at .the Salvation army shelter, the prisoner had asked to he admitted there about four o’clock a. m. to dry his clothes. ■ When the watchman told him to call again at five o’clock, as }t was against the rules to admit anyone before that hour, rite prisoner threw Ms cap at the window and broke rite glass. The magistrate was Interested is the prisoner’s story that he had been turned away from police station and a hospital, and declined to dispose of the case until he ascertained whether it was true. Another tale of red tape methods in a London hospital is told by an American. He suffered an Injury to his eye and was In great pain. ‘‘Can you afford to pay for the treatment?” asked the surgeon at the hospital. —— • “Oh, yes,’’ responded the American. "Then we can do nothing for you,” said the surgeon. “We treat only those who cannot afford to pay.”—N. T. Sun.