South Yorkshire Times, October 16th 1943

Rehabilitation Expert Sees Montagu Hospital Scheme at Work

Some of the patients doing rehabilitation exercises at the Manvers Main Boys’ Club

Mr. J. Rhaiadr Jones, hon. adviser on rehabilitation to the Ministry of Health, paid an informal visit on Friday to the rehabilitation centre which has been temporarily established by Mexborough Montagu Hospital in the gymnasium of Manvers Main Boys Club by kind permission of Manvers Main Collieries, Ltd.

The centre, in the few weeks it has been operating, has already proved a boon in helping injured miners to get fit quicker. Mr. Jones, who is also chairman of the Central Council for the Care of Cripples and hon. secretary to the Lord Nuffield Fund for Cripples, is a qualified doctor and was house surgeon to Sir Robert Jones, the famous orthopaedic surgeon.

He told a South Yorkshire Times reporter that rehabilitation was spreading throughout the country and the Miners’ Welfare Commission was taking it up. Injured miners, who would normally hanging about street corners and not improving their condition for getting back to work, were returning to work quicker and were much fitter men than they were under the old system where they went to a doctor once a week and had no exercise. One of the great ideas of rehabilitation was to keep fit the rest of the body of an injured man.

The Montagu Hospital’s centre at Manvers is available through the courtesy of the Directors of the Colliery until the Hospital gets its own premises at the Hospital, On Friday, the instructor, ex-Quarter Master Sergt. J. M. Crane, was putting the men through physical training exercises to strengthen injured backs, ankles and legs. The way in which the men vigorously take part in the exercises was clear indication that they welcome rehabilitation. There are already over 20 men having treatment and the number increases weekly. Mr. Crane told the Times reporter that the men responded well to the treatment and realised it was doing them good.

There were very few absentees, John Langford, a Wath miner, who received a back injury and who had had his spinal jacket off for a week, said the exercises were doing him good. He had been off work five months with a fracture of the lumber vertebrae, but he would get back to work quicker than most men had done with injuries like his through this new treatment.

Accompanying Mr. Jones were Mr. W. G. Turner, President of the Hospital, Mr. A. W. Youngs (Secretary-Superintendent), and Mr. D. S. Humphreys, J.P.