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decrease in staff, better supervision of the dormitories at night to
prevent cruelty and bullying of the younger, \'ieaker children, and for
muc greater supervision of those apprenticed out from the Asylum .
Contrary to commonly held opinion, he considered the chi ldren equally as
inteligent as others of the same class, lacking neither in exercise or
healthy emp loyment.
Above all else, he recommended that the diet be
limited only by the appetites of the chi ldren , provided there was no
\'iaste. 16
Although there was a considerab le body of evidence , like
Allen's, opposed to Hall's, the Gleadow Commission understood and
appreciated his viewpoint .
We were quite aware of the financial position of . the colony
and of the necessity for the utmost economy, and, therefore ,
not inclined to sanction anything like lavish or unnecessary
expenditure, however desirable the obj ect to be obtained -
but as the natural result of our being brought into contact
\'lith such a number of young children ... o·ur sympathies were
drawn to\.,rards them ... and our most anxious care b ecarne not
h0\'1 cheaply the children could be maintained ... but rather to
place the establishment on such a footing with proper regard
to economy as could embrace amp le provision for their wants ,
and for their mora 1, religious and industrial training and
secular instruction .. : if not, all money spent \'las
squandered. 1 7
Thi s, after all, in effect was exactly \'I hat Hall \'I rote to Coverdale in
1865 . With respect to the diet, the Commissioners openly acknowledged
the influence of Hall's evidence on their decision, namely , that the
allowance of food was not too great, especially the milk ration set do\m
by the 1859 Commission.
Freed from his anxious care to re-establish the diet scale,
Hall turned once more to the unresolved conflict between Coverdale and
May over the costs of their respective institutions , and to the suppression
by the Mercury of part of his Health Report for May 1867 pertaining to it.
On August 3, he sought the assistance of a comparatively ne\'1 pub lication
in Hobart Town, The Tasmanian Times , which printed his long article on
August 6. Here, he repeated the section \'lhich the Mercury had deliberately
suppressed;
needless to say, it disclosed facts very unpalatable to the
Randwick Superintendent and to the Mercury 's approval and sponsorship of
him: the mortality statistics of the Randwick Asylum which Hall gave
19 H.A.P. 1867/38.
1 7 Ibid.