South Yorkshire Times February 19, 1949
Where Have Hospital’s Edgar Wallace’s Gone?
Lost, strayed, but not stolen — 178 books from Mexborough Montagu Hospital library. In 1947 the figure was 277! Stock-taking at the end revealed a happyier future, but the official of this deeply appreciated voluntary service was still wondering where these 178 volume of reclining.
The Library Committee secretary, Mr C.H. Harris, Barnsley Road, Goldthorpe, told me this week (writes a “South Yorkshire Times” reporter), “They are just lying around somewhere, not stolen but missing.”
A search of the wards has brought forth a number of the books, and the officials are confident that they will get the outstanding figure down to satisfactory proportions.
Total stock of books in the library, says Mr. Harris, is creeping up to 2,000 — what a fine record for an organisation which did not come into existence until June, 1947, only 19 months ago. Majority of the books have been begged by members of the Committee and helpers, or sent along by well-wishers —for example, Mrs. E. Barraclough (Wombwell) has 200 books for the library—but the Committee have also expended money on the purchase of new volumes.
Last year they spent £9 to this end, and some of these purchases are among the missing books.
I looked through Mr. Harris’s foolscap-sized catalogue of books unaccounted for, six or seven sheets in length. Missing were three Edgar Wallaces. Other titles were by Ethel M. Dell, J. S. Fletcher, Philip Gibbs, P. G. Wodehouse and Baroness Orczy. There were four new paper-backed ”Westerns.”
Members of the Committee and helpers, about 40 in number—some of Goldthorpe’s Young Christian Workers among them—pass along the women’s wards with their treasures on Wednesdays and along the men’s wards on Thursdays. Last year, Mr. Harris estimates, between 400 and 500 patients received books, and how welcome these library was in the hospital
“if you miss one week they will be after you for a book,” Mr Harris adds, “They miss, too, the little chat every week, and we miss it, too.”