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as a Quarantine Station.
189
He agreed with Officer that it would have been
comparative wisdom to have landed the immigrants under the gum trees on a
barren, rocky isle in the channel with a few sails for shelter, rather
than to have kept them four days and nights with disease and death rife
round them, tantalized by the sight of, town and freedom .
He accused
Henty, Milligan and the Countil of the Royal Society of irrespons ibility
and a failure to face the facts, as set out in his ''Medico-Vital Statistics''
paper and his monthly_ ''Health Reports'' which , instead of being left to
accumulate unheeded for twelve months , would in future be published
immediately in the Daily News for the benefit of the Public.
But the
depth and bitterness of his anger at Bedford 's neglect of the children
under his charge in the Orphan School surpas sed all else .
There are some people either so callous , so indifferent or so
ignorant and self-willed as never to be alarmed . Death may
have reaped its victims in public institutions at arate from
six to eight times greater than children of the same age, at
the same time , have died in the country. This may even have
been demonstrated irrefutably to have taken place on an average
of seventeen successive years . And yet there are persons so
obtuse, so prejudiced, to see nothing in this for alarm,
nothing to amend . That 263 children may have perished when -
had they not been subjected to the tender, watchful care of
such an institution and taken their chance with the ''wild colt11
children of the colonists at large, but 30-40 would have died.
In ringing words , to which his opponents, like Bedford and Milligan, would
have been well advised to listen, Hal l proclaimed both his determination
and his intention :
Now I proclaim myself an alarmist, and in the ears of all such
as I have described, I will ring an alarum that shall at least
apprise the pub lic of their neglect - and shame them if possible
into the execution of such urgent and imperative duties .
Whatever ons cience or duty, Sir, indicates that I ought to do ,
either as man, Christian, gentleman or medical practitioner,
no self interest , no fear - moral or physical - has ever yet ,
and I pray God never may , direct me from carrying it into
execution. One member of the Government, at least, did me
justice - for which I thank him - when he said, "that where
the alleviation of human suffering was the object , he believed
that Dr Hall would walk to death itself" . 9
The next day, Hall seethed at the personal attacks levelled
against him by the Courier over his request for a pension of two hundred
pounds for his family.
In a furious letter to the Daily News on
November 8, he attacked the Executive for higgling about terms with
medical practitioners who had expressed their readiness to undertake the
9
Daily News, Novemb er 7, 185 7.