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It recommended the Government to abandon its rigid economy and pay more
attention to the comfort of the poor, helpless, friendless beings
thereby supported.
By the late 1850s, in spite of small improveents in the
buildings the children 's diet, clothing and the like, Hall's mort ality
figures showed that the essential prob lem of the children 's health still
remained unsolved.
Although his previous efforts succeeded only in
rousing Bedford 's antagonism, Hall was still determined to solve the
problem of the exceedingly high death rate. Throughout the year 1858
he shm'led his increasing concern for the children ,
and his anger at
Bedford 's management of them in almost every article he wrote.
On
May 19, 1858, he restated the situation in "Soldiers in England
Orphans in Tasmania11•
On an average of thirteen years , as admitted by its own
medi cal officer in the Australian Medical Journal of
Octob er, 1857, and repub lished in the Hobart Town Advertiser
of the 23rd September, last - there has been an annu al
mort ality six times greater than that of the children of
the same age in the country districts of the colony.
The Registrar-General 's returns for 1855 and 1856, which
were called for in Parliament by Honorab le Mr Kermode and
printed give indisputab le proof of this - In 1855 the
deaths at the Orphan School were thirteen times greater
than that of children of the same age in the country.
As he sought an answer to
the riddle, Hall was very impressed with the
findings of the English Royal Army Commissioners who, in part, ascribed
the excessive military mortality to the soldiers being fed day after
day on boiled beef without any change .
Physiologists have long enough shown that such a practice
is most injurious - that the stomach revolts against the
unv arying sameness of such a diet - that however nutritious
in quality and ample in quantity the food may be, its
nutriment would not be assimilated, from the nausea and
distaste excited by the daily repetition of the same
article of food cooked in the same way, and that much of
it would be rej ected from the system without adding to
support the strength of the body.
\fuen he applied this
line of reasoning to the orphan children, he was
appalled at what he found.
In that establishment unt il very recent ly, up to fourteen
years of age, the children were allowed, day after day,
for 362 days of the year , no other food than dry bread
and weak tea, morning and evening; and for dinner as mes s,
made from the miserable 1/ 4
lb . meat (less the tolls it had
previously paid to matrons and other officers) , 1/4 lb .
vegetables , broken bread and the occasional scraps of broken
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