but because the whole massive enterprise had been floated, so to speak, on an ocean of rum.
It was no secret to Dunne or any other resident that the hospital had been built a dozen years earlier only because its contractors were given a monopoly on importing the colony’s rum for three years. Even then the construction cost them little; the government supplied convict builders, working bullocks and oxen for rations.
The patterer had never met the most widely known of these contractors, Dr. D’Arcy Wentworth, who had died only the previous year. He was better acquainted with one of the late doctor’s sons, William Charles Wentworth, a businessman, explorer and lawyer who published The Australian , baited the governor and wooed Miss Sarah Cox.
Old D’Arcy’s past was now discreetly veiled over. He had been acquitted at least twice of highway robbery in England before going into exile in Australia—where he found fame and fortune, helped immeasurably by the chance to sell 60,000 gallons of rum. He had even taken up the running of the new hospital, with Dr. William Redfern (the choleric gentleman who had flogged the hapless Gazette editor), a surgeon who had been sentenced to death, then to transportation, for involvement in a Royal Navy mutiny.
Entering the hospital’s northern wing, Dunne felt the apprehension that such institutions elicited in all people. These were places you were lucky to escape from alive; all advice was to stay out—especially if you were sick!
Tales of privations from the hospital’s early years still chilled Sydneysiders. The convict staff had been accused of theft and rape. The rations, certainly, were only cheap meat and flour; those unable to stomach this diet had to trade with citizens on the street outside. The room designated the kitchen had instead become the death-house. And dysentery victims, the most numerous patients (after those with venereal disease), had to stagger to outside privies.
The patterer was still inwardly shuddering at the ghosts conjured by the mere proximity of the place when a hearty voice echoed through the main entry. It came from behind an outstretched hand, unseasonably heavily gloved.
“Hello, I’m the doctor. Have a lozenge.”
The speaker was a very tall man of forty or so years, with a shock of curly brown hair escaping from a wide-brimmed hat. He had a shy, discolored smile. The patterer knew him by sight as Dr. Thomas Owens, but apart from that he was an unknown quantity. His origins were unclear and he seemed to prefer keeping it that way. But that sort of secrecy was common in the colony, and the patterer had heard that Dr. Owens’s abilities were unimpeachable.
As he spoke, Owens held out a paper bag filled with diamond-shaped confectionery. “I always offer these to visitors entering the hospital,” he said cheerily. “These are peppermint,” he added, pointing, “and your tastebuds and olfactory organ will appreciate the relief they offer in the face of the noxious miasma that invariably inhabits a house of sickness. These other lozenges are of tolu, a stomachic agent of fragrant balsam. Even I, inured as I am to grisly sights and effluvium, find tolu useful to settle an interior unnerved by exposure to corruption. Do not hesitate to tell me if, or when, you require one of those.”
Dunne duly took a peppermint and sucked it thoughtfully as they walked along a corridor flanked on one side by a ward of coughing, occasionally groaning patients and on the other by a room that, incongruously, was filled not with people but with stuffed birds and animals.
“Don’t believe all the stories you hear,” said Owens suddenly, seeming to read the patterer’s initial gloomy thoughts. “The hospital has been reformed in many ways. Those taxidermy subjects are the only things we want to see dead!” At this he peeled off his gloves.
“Oh, we have had to share with other birds of a feather in this institution. Why, until a few years ago the
It was no secret to Dunne or any other resident that the hospital had been built a dozen years earlier only because its contractors were given a monopoly on importing the colony’s rum for three years. Even then the construction cost them little; the government supplied convict builders, working bullocks and oxen for rations.
The patterer had never met the most widely known of these contractors, Dr. D’Arcy Wentworth, who had died only the previous year. He was better acquainted with one of the late doctor’s sons, William Charles Wentworth, a businessman, explorer and lawyer who published The Australian , baited the governor and wooed Miss Sarah Cox.
Old D’Arcy’s past was now discreetly veiled over. He had been acquitted at least twice of highway robbery in England before going into exile in Australia—where he found fame and fortune, helped immeasurably by the chance to sell 60,000 gallons of rum. He had even taken up the running of the new hospital, with Dr. William Redfern (the choleric gentleman who had flogged the hapless Gazette editor), a surgeon who had been sentenced to death, then to transportation, for involvement in a Royal Navy mutiny.
Entering the hospital’s northern wing, Dunne felt the apprehension that such institutions elicited in all people. These were places you were lucky to escape from alive; all advice was to stay out—especially if you were sick!
Tales of privations from the hospital’s early years still chilled Sydneysiders. The convict staff had been accused of theft and rape. The rations, certainly, were only cheap meat and flour; those unable to stomach this diet had to trade with citizens on the street outside. The room designated the kitchen had instead become the death-house. And dysentery victims, the most numerous patients (after those with venereal disease), had to stagger to outside privies.
The patterer was still inwardly shuddering at the ghosts conjured by the mere proximity of the place when a hearty voice echoed through the main entry. It came from behind an outstretched hand, unseasonably heavily gloved.
“Hello, I’m the doctor. Have a lozenge.”
The speaker was a very tall man of forty or so years, with a shock of curly brown hair escaping from a wide-brimmed hat. He had a shy, discolored smile. The patterer knew him by sight as Dr. Thomas Owens, but apart from that he was an unknown quantity. His origins were unclear and he seemed to prefer keeping it that way. But that sort of secrecy was common in the colony, and the patterer had heard that Dr. Owens’s abilities were unimpeachable.
As he spoke, Owens held out a paper bag filled with diamond-shaped confectionery. “I always offer these to visitors entering the hospital,” he said cheerily. “These are peppermint,” he added, pointing, “and your tastebuds and olfactory organ will appreciate the relief they offer in the face of the noxious miasma that invariably inhabits a house of sickness. These other lozenges are of tolu, a stomachic agent of fragrant balsam. Even I, inured as I am to grisly sights and effluvium, find tolu useful to settle an interior unnerved by exposure to corruption. Do not hesitate to tell me if, or when, you require one of those.”
Dunne duly took a peppermint and sucked it thoughtfully as they walked along a corridor flanked on one side by a ward of coughing, occasionally groaning patients and on the other by a room that, incongruously, was filled not with people but with stuffed birds and animals.
“Don’t believe all the stories you hear,” said Owens suddenly, seeming to read the patterer’s initial gloomy thoughts. “The hospital has been reformed in many ways. Those taxidermy subjects are the only things we want to see dead!” At this he peeled off his gloves.
“Oh, we have had to share with other birds of a feather in this institution. Why, until a few years ago the
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