Some Hospital Statistics

Autumn 1915

Each of the departments, in an institution with so many ramifications as has the 3rd L.G.H., naturally enough claims to be the least indispensable and the hardest worked. Myself, I am inclined to award the latter distinction to the main kitchen. Its labours seem never to cease. But the sergeant who presides here was able to divert his attention, for a space, from the cares of his establishment, to tell me something of its workings. "Plenty of people," said he, "ask questions about how this kitchen is run; and will even criticise, sometimes. Well, we have to get in our 'Diets' every day, and these consist of meat (such as roast beef, mutton, boiled beef, and stewed steak). These are issued to patients who are on what is called Ordinary Diet. In addition to this we have to prepare Special Diets, which consist of roast and boiled chickens, fish (fried and boiled), stewed mutton and chops; also beef tea and chicken or mutton broths. Then there are the puddings. When we have roast meat we make suet pudding, commonly called Duff; but those patients who are on special diet receive milk pudding or custard.

"As to quantities: here are some of our daily figures. There are issued to me on average 700 lb. of meat per day for ordinary diets, 100 lb. of fish, 100 chickens, 600 lb. of potatoes, 350 lb. of cabbages, and, when mixed vegetables are being used - 100lb. of turnips, 50lb. of onions, and 100 lb. of carrots. These latter are served with boiled beef. The milk used in my kitchen averages 50 gallons daily. You must remember, by the way, that this is not the only kitchen in the hospital; there are also the officers' wards kitchen, and infirmary kitchen, the nurses' kitchen, and that of the orderlies; and sergeants' messes. All the cooking in the hospital is done by gas ovens and gas rings. In my kitchen a boiler is used to make steam for the potatoes, and for fish, when steamed fish is specially ordered by the M.O. The potatoes, I may say, are peeled by a machine."

From the main kitchen I went to the Stewards' Store, whose staff, as we all know, have to rise and be on parade with the rest of the orderlies, but only go to bed when they can (and on some nights, I was told, not at all). They certainly deal in an amazing number of commodities. During September, for instance, they issued 25,000 eggs for use in the hospital - and this was a falling off from August's record. They distribute 400 syphons of soda water and lemonade weekly, 2 tons of potatoes, one and a half tons of cabbages, and 4 cwt. of jam. 1,000lb. of bread pass through their hands, not weekly, but daily; and other daily figures are: 1 cwt. of butter, 2 cwt. of sugar, 1 cwt. of ice, 25 lb. of salt, 23 lb. of tea, 15 lb. of cocoa, 100 lb. of oatmeal, 40 to 50 lb. of cereals for puddings, and 220 gallons of milk. In the Dry Store section 3,000 lb. of soap per month ensures the cleanliness of the hospital, 7 cwt. of soda, and 2 cwt. of powdered soap, while its floors demand fifty gallons of polish, to which are added twenty-five gallons of turpentine. At the Linen Stores - where the Staff Sergeant is generally seen with his coat off, a phenomenon symptomatic of the department's incessant busy-ness - I was told that there is a turnover - through the laundry - of no less than 150,000 articles a month. The stock consists of approximately 100,000 articles, amongst which are 6,000 sheets, 6,000 blankets, 3,000 cotton shirts, 3,000 flannel shirts, 5,000 pairs of socks, and 2,000 blue kit suits. To keep track of all this vast collection - only a few items of which have been indicated - is no light task, to which must be added the equipment of new wards with bedsteads, lockers, kitchen hardware, chairs, tables, mattresses, bedding etc. The staff justifiably prides itself on being able thoroughly to equip a thirty-two-bed ward in the short space of one hour.

As a relief from these more serious aspects of the hospital I finally turned my steps to the old-building Recreation room to enquire into the consumption of tobacco. After spending an hour wrestling with innumerable chits collected by the Recreation Room orderly-in-charge, I performed a grandiose sum in addition, which gave, as its result, a total sufficient to make a Wills's, Players's or Salmon and Gluckstein's mouth water. It was only an average morning that I examined, yet here was documentary evidence that 5,500 cigarettes had been given out for patients' use, and 92 oz. of pipe tobacco. 'Some' smoke, to be sure! Mathematical readers can multiply by seven to arrive at a week's burnt-offering at the shrine of My Lady Nicotine, and perhaps some good-natured calculator, with nothing better to do, will let us know that if a month's cigarettes at the L.G.H. were rolled into one fabulous fag it would stretch from here to the trenches at the Front, or conceivably even to Berlin, which would, maybe, be more appropriate. for myself, this tour of the hospital has given me sufficient statistics to provide nightmares enough for the rest of my life; and what the figures will be like if the 3rd L.G.H. grows any bigger I shudder to think.