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daily repasts. Baked meat and pot:' toes , Irish stew and
soup , being their dinner alternately six days of the week,
and oatmeal stir about with sugar and three quarters of a
pint of milk on the seventh (Friday) . On Friday a morsel
of ch eese is served to each ch ild at tea time, to make the
nitrogeneous aliment equal to the fresh meat days . · On
Sunday a pdding of suet, flour and currants is added, but
the flour comes out of the bread allowance. Surely no
reasonable parent can call this 'lcurious overfeeding ' of
the children. Those who do had better try the experiment
on their own househ olds, taking care that the test is not
vitiated by stealthy and intermediate supplies of cake,
fruit, nuts etc. etc.
To Bedford 's criticism of the building of a temporary shed for the infant
children at a cost of £40, he answered:
In a room thirty feet long and eighteen feet wide, day after
day, were 144 human beings crammed to take their meals ...
The sub-committee, having visited the infant children in
their mess room at tea, were shocked to find the foul state
of the atmosphere there existing from so many children being
crowded together. The poor things all exhibited a flushed,
feverish app earance. Many of these children, moreover, are
four in a b ed 3
• . •
These two expressions of opinion closed the long conflict
between Hall and Bedford.
as ever to his own view:
controversy;
To the end each man attested just as strongly
Bedford, conservative and immutable, deprecated
Hall, adventurous and flexib le, pleaded for free discussion
in which every man's facts , figures and deductions might be fairly examined
on their intrinsic merits and admitted or rejected accordingly.
July, 1863, Bedford left Hobarton a disappointed man who felt his many
services to the community had not been properly recompensed.
In
With Bedford
app ointed to the position of Medical Inspector of Prisons in New South Wales,
the field of social welfare in Hobarton was left wide open to Hall's
persuasion.
In spite of the fact that he was not reappointed to the Board
of Management of the Queen's Orphan Schools Hall persisted in taking a very
active interest in the affairs of the institution.
Although debarred
from discussions at the Board table, he argued just as vigorously in the
columns of the Mercury which staunchly printed his many long letters .
No longer diffused by the details of management, he as sumed once again
the equally important role of observer, critic, counsellor and teacher .
He was interested in every small detail . "Even now" , he wrote in his
criticism of the Estimates of Expenditure for 1863 J
"I cannot think such
3
Mercury, January 25, 1862 .