Speculum - University of Melbourne

esidents,
and their salaries
bill richards
The following is an article discovered in the July 1915 edition of Speculum:
In these very strenuous times of national strife one is naturally disinclined to cavil at
the conditions under which we labour, or to unduly criticise the governing bodies who guard
our interests. But forgetting the fact, or even remembering it, that our nation is fighting for
its very existence, and that our national life is being sorely tried, one cannot help feeling
that it is high time that Residents at our hospitals were paid a reasonable wage.
A short review of the facts of the case, and a study of the salaries paid to Residents,
leads one to the inevitable conclusion that these men are positively underpaid, and that the
yearly stipend is in no way indicative of the services they render the institution in which
they are employed. It scarcely seems probable or believable that the Committees of Management
of these great public hospitals realise the changes which have taken place in the
medical course during the last twenty years.
It is an incontrovertible fact that, years ago, the medical course was reserved for the
sons of the rich and well-to-do men, and the number of poor and almost penniless students
formed a small percentage of the total number. So that, once these men received their
degrees, they were in a position to take their residentships for a paltry yearly salary, by
virtue of their private means. And the hospital authorities were cute enough, on this account,
to make the salary very microscopic.
But nowadays it is no uncommon thing for a man to work his way through the medical
course, and we all of us know many instances in which men who graduate immediately set
out to earn a living, because their meagre allowance cannot carry them any further. Some
do not sit for honours on this account, because they would be unable to take a hospital,
owing to their lack of private means, and because these hospitals refuse to pay their
Residents a living wage.
Our University education costs several hundreds of pounds up to the time we are
qualified, and it is a well-known fact that we pay through the nose for everything, and often
for very little. And it is a further fact that all these years we are subsisting on the charity
and generosity of our parents, this in some cases augmented by scholarships, exhibitions, fees
for coaching, and outside work in the vacations. And after all this work and expense we
are offered for services, which we all know are very strenuous and responsible, an amount
which does not constitute a living wage.
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