THE LONDON HOSPITAL.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR.'] Sra,—My letter to the Press will already have been seen by your readers, and in any event would be too long to ask you to insert in the Spectator. But can you possibly help me, by an editorial note, in the very onerous task of having to collect 2100,000 this year—and every year—for this vast hospital? In 1908, our quinquennial begging year, I have to try to replace 2140,000, which we have had to spend out of our investments in rebuilding our hundred-and-forty-year-old hospital, in addition to getting the 2100,000 for upkeep. A hospital like the London, with its fourteen thousand in- patients and two hundred and fifty thousand out-patients, is really doing a national and not merely a local work. May not I claim that we who work for these hospitals ought to be generously helped? I give a good part of three, often more, days every week to the London, and have ever present to me, in addition to the burden of management, the intolerable anxiety of "Where can I get the money for this ? " It is no gain to us who are engaged in this work whether the money comes or not. But here is a public getting their duty to the sick poor done, without taxation, without being rated, by men who receive no pay for their work, and ask only the encouragement of being generously helped. I get very weary of it all and often despair, and the fit of depression I have on me now, looking forward to next year's work, must be my excuse for :the plaintive personal tone of this letter. But help me if you can. There is so much suffering amongst the poor from which it is impossible that they can escape except by the charitable gifts of the rich, and this suffering is so patiintly borne, that one cannot desert them just because one feels weary. I am sorry to be a nuistince.—I am, Sir, &c., SYDNEY HOLLAND. London Hospital, Whitechapel, E., New Year's Eve.
[Mr. Sydney Holland is often spoken of as the most successful of beggars, and those who use such language seem to imply that there must be something agreeable in doing the work so well. The above may make them realise what an exhausting expenditure of time and personal force is required from those who undertake to beg for public help. The stone is rolled up every year, but every year it is again at the bottom of the hill, and the task must once more be attempted. One might imagine that no man would undertake such a work of his own free will. Yet the Sisyphus of the London Hospital and his colleagues have undertaken to roll the vast stone without compulsion, and solely because they feel that the work must be done, and that no one else seems willing to do it. Most sincerely do we hope that they will be able to get the money they require, and to get it without too heart-breaking a sacrifice of time and labour.—En. Spectator.]
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