Lunacy administration in Cape Colony / by T. Duncan Greenlees.

  • Greenlees, T. Duncan.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Lunacy administration in Cape Colony / by T. Duncan Greenlees. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    amount being calculated on the average emoluments of the last three years of his service. This scale is, upon the whole, a liberal one for the ordinary civil servant, who joins when he is seventeen years of age, and whose office hours are from nine until four ; but it is different with asylum officials, such as medical officers, who are appointed only after having had their training. These men are rarely appointed before the age of thirty, and accordingly have already lost thirteen years’ service for pension purposes. In view of this anomaly, and to bring the question of pen¬ sions, as they affect asylum employees, directly under the notice of the Government, a meeting of asylum medical officers was held, and a scheme drafted enabling asylum officials to retire at fifty, after fifteen years’ service, and at fifty-five for certain others of the staff, with ten years added to their service. Fortunately, just at that time a Commission was sitting to consider generally the Civil Service, for there were many injustices requiring amendment, and Dr. Dodds and I were enabled to lay before them the claims of asylum officers for more liberal terms as regards pensions, etc., than were already provided for by the Civil Service Act. As a result the Commission recommended that officials in the asylum service should be allowed to retire on pension after fifteen years’ service, being fifty years of age, such pension not to exceed one-half of the salary, if the usual calculation on the Civil Service scale did not amount to this ; otherwise the pen¬ sion would be in accordance with the ordinary scale of the service. These terms were on a more liberal scale than those submitted by us. A Bill was drafted to give effect to the Commissioners’ recommendations, but it never got so far as Parliament, owing to a political crisis occurring at the psychological moment! There is no doubt, however, that the next amendment of the Civil Service Act will embody most, if not all, of the recom¬ mendations of the Commissioners, and, in the meantime, an assurance was given us that their recommendations would have effect in any case submitted. Mental Nursing in Cape Colony.—Previous to 1890 nothing in the way of training was even thought of in the asylums of Cape Colony, although before this date the hospital nurse was