PALACE HOSPITAL, 18_th January_ 1855. MADAM--I have the honor to forward a requisition for 50 shirts and 50 warm flannels. The Purveyor has none. Knowing the extensive demand, I have limited my request to meet the urgent requirements of the most serious cases in my charge. I have the honor to be, Madam, your most obedient humble servant, EDWARD MENZIES, Staff Surgeon in Charge. [117] Kinglake, p. 430. He cites an example of the complaints in a private letter from Sir John Burgoyne to Lord Raglan (March 27, 1855). The complaint of the "groove-going men" has been revived in our own day by Lord Stanmore, who complains of Miss Nightingale (_Memoir of Sidney Herbert_, vol. i. p. 381) that she got things (which the Purveyor had failed to get) instead of informing him where they could be got. She acted on what is a golden rule in cases of emergency. When she wanted a thing done without delay, she did it herself. The list, said the commissioners drily, "must not be regarded as conclusive proof that the articles mentioned in it were invariably wanting in the [Government] stores." Goods, they explained, "have been refused, although they were, to our personal knowledge, lying in abundance in the store of the Purveyor." Why refused? Because the Purveyor took it upon himself to override the requisition of the medical officers? Not at all. "This was done because they had not been examined by the Board of Survey. On one occasion, in the month of December last [1854], we found that this was the case with respect to Hospital rugs, and it is probable that this has not been the only instance of such an occurrence." Miss Nightingale's letters to Mr. Herbert show that it was a frequent occurrence. For instance, in February 1855, she received a requisition from the medical officers at Balaclava for shirts. She knew that 27,000 shirts had at her instance been sent by Government from home, and they were already landed. But the Purveyor would not let them be used; "he could not unpack them without a Board." Three weeks elapsed before the Board released the shirts. The sick and wounded, lying shivering for want of rugs and shirts, would have expressed themselves forcibly, I fear, if it had been explained that they must shiver still until the Board of Survey's good time had arrived.