Committal to care allowed

A section in the Health Act, as amended and consolidated during the last Parliamentary session, will be of great advantage to the police or other authorities under whose notice cases of aged, destitute, or infirm persons living without proper care and attention may be brought.

The Act gives the authorities power to take such a person before a magistrate in order that an order of committal to some suitable home or institution may be made, and, further, to enforce compliance with such order as may be made. In the past many difficult cases have cropped up, both of aged people who refused to go to an institution, and, strangely enough, of difficulties which have arisen through the refusal of the authorities in charge of charitable or other institutions to take such persons under their care.