Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/220

208 had had a savage quarrel. At the end he banged out of the house, exclaiming, "I will put an end to this." She had bawled after him, "I hope to God you will." He had wandered to Whitechapel and, creeping into a stable, had cut his throat there and then. The friend who hastened to inform the wife told her, with a tactfulness I so grievously lacked, that her husband had met with an accident and had been taken to the hospital. This lesson I never forgot and in the future based my method of announcing disaster upon that adopted by the butler's discreet friend.

Although a digression from the present subject I am reminded of the confusion that occasionally took place in the identity of cases. All patients in the hospital who are seriously ill, whether they have been long in the wards or have been only just admitted, are placed on "the dangerous list" and have their names posted at the gate so that their relatives might be admitted at any time of the day or night.

A man very gravely injured had been taken into the accident ward. He was insensible and his condition such that he was at once put on the dangerous list, or, in the language of the time, was "gated." During the course of the evening a youngish woman, dressed obviously in her best,