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179
Carefully and precisely Hall set out to prove that the mortality rate
\as incredib ly high .
Compari _ ng it with the death rate of children
elsewhere , he found that in 1854 , 53 children out of 422 had died, or
a little more than 1/8 of the whole, or nearly 13%, o 130 per 1000 .
Of the 114 deaths in three years at the school, had there been no such
institution and had the chi ldren there received taken their chance with
all the rest of the chi ldren in the country distri cts , at the utmost only
7 would have died; in other words , 107 ch ildren perished in the Orphan
School over and ab ove the average rate of death for chi ldren of the same
age in all the country districts of Tasmania.
Such a shocking state of
mortality he ascribed to the inability of th e chi . ldren to withstand
•
epidemic attacks equally as well as other children, due to a lack of
constitutional stamina which was principally induced by insufficient
breathing space by night , too great an exposure to chi lling through
draughts by day , and a very limited supp ly of animal food.
he wrote
Of the food
Any parent in Tasmania would think it a mockery to serve their
hearty growing boys such a morsel after it was cooked.
He described the orphan boys as stunted, fat , potbellied, dul l and
inactive , in contrast to boarding-school boys under his care who were
tall, thin but mus cular , fu ll of activity and smart .
The excessive mortality at the Orphan School has created very
wide spread dissatisfaction for many years . Boards of
enquiry have been instituted, but constituted as they were
alone of officials responsible for the management , the finding
could not be otherwise than unsatisfactory to every reasonable
person . I have spared no pains to investigate the subj ect in
a thoroughly independent and unprejudiced spirit, and I solicit
my medicaJ brethren in Australia to examine the question in its
humane and scientific aspects alone , and to aid me in
ameliorating the sad condition I have depicted.
Hal l hoped that the convict authorities in charge would undertake reforms
themselves , without waiting for indignant pressure from outside .
th e duty of every man of science , every person interested in Public
Health, every friend of humanity, to help find out the causes of such
It was
havoc from diseas e in the Queen' s Orphan Schools and help to remove them .
His final paragraphs, pregnant with feeling and determination,
revealed him as a humanitarian whose motives could not reasonably be
questioned.
Speaking of the Orphan Schoo l, he wrote
The institution , in its obj ects , is a nob le one . Its
appearance is most prepossessing , from its commanding and
picturesque position, its external architecture , and the