SPLENDOURS AND MISERIES OF THE MIDDLE CLASSES [To the Editor
of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Miss Gertrude Kingston writes in a much better style than I can imitate, but her subject matter is not so true as mine. She strongly reminds me of some of my patients who believe what they like to believe. For a man with a black coat with white seams to keep even one servant is a crime of boundless extravagance. If the poor man's wife refuses to do the household chores he should muddle it through himself—
gentlemen do that. I have seen them at work. I have never seen out of doors a middle-class woman in shabby clothes, excepting those rare occasions when women have fallen to the depths of poverty.
I do not know a big hospital which could not have paid its way, and have accumulated a surplus, had it attended only to those for whom it was originally intended, and supposed to be intended for at the present day. Some panel doctors' waiting-rooms may be crammed, but not the majority. Every hospital will take in an urgent ease—provision is always made for that. Miss Kingston says that neither a hospital nor an infirmary would take in a certain case, and in the following paragraph contradicts herself by giving an instance in which a servant was sent to an infirmary— undoubtedly the proper place for her.
Panel patients are always admitted to a hospital when necessary. Miss Kingston does not say what she means by a feudal relation between employer and employee. I am. afraid that if she were to attempt treating her servant or servants as employers were accustomed to do in feudal times the results would be exceedingly unpleasant, even though the daily newspapers subsidized her. The fees of a nursing home run from five guineas a week, but, I believe that I am correct in saying that the private wards of a hospital are very much less.
I speak as a doctor, and if Miss Kingston includes my vocation in her category of middle-class, as one of that class also. I also speak as one who has been very poor indeed, and one who has had seven young children to provide for. I have known the time when a penny meant to me as much as a pound does to-day. I know the ropes, and I am very sorry that I ever had to learn them. Things are grey with us all at times, but why paint them black ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
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