Dear colleagues. can you help me?
One of our readers is on the track of an authoritative reference for Aneurin
Bevan's quote about one dropped bedpan being heard in the Palace of Westminster
(recently recycled by Health Secretary Alan Millburn [the quote not the bedpan,
one hopes!])
We seem to have established that the proper quote was probably made in 1948
when Bevan was Minister for Health and it was probably more accurately:
"the sound of a bedpan falling in Tredegar Hospital would resound in the Palace
of Westminster".
We have also established that it is not in Michael Foot's Biography of Bevan.
So is anyone able to help? - by checking histories of NHS, other biographies,
quotation books etcetera - remember that all I have here is a couple of
computer terminals and a couple of dictionaries :-)
BTW It is not worth checking the Internet for this one - I am 99.8% positive of
that - I have found unauthoritative versions of the quote on the Guardian Web
site, Millburn's speech to the Fabian society and even in the NHS Plan all via
the Internet. It would be nice to think that "one dropped line at ScHARR would
resound in the UK health libraries community" - even in August!
BTWA Yes I know that it is "quotation", not "quote" but I didn't want to have
to write that but I guess now I have!
Andrew Booth BA MSc Dip Lib MCLIP
Senior Lecturer in Evidence Based Healthcare Information
& Director of Information Resources
School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR)
Regent Court, 30 Regent Street
SHEFFIELD
S1 4DA
Tel: 0114 222 0705
Fax: 0114 272 4095
Email: [log in to unmask]
-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
|