In The Old Hospital Corridors 

Some of the very disturbed and some of the elderly patients were too ill too work. To make matters worse for the elderly on reaching retirement age their benefit was reduced to a mere £2 a week, or in some cases nothing at all, as the Society considered that all their needs were met by the hospital. Some patients were reduced to smoking dog-ends. Two patients who spotted the same dog-end would race to pick it up, the loser harbouring resentment if he thought he had spotted it first. These unfortunates scoured the corridors for dog ends. Some joined the beggars who scrounged cigarettes, starting at six in the morning when the staff began waking the patients. The beggars would roam from ward to ward hoping to catch other patients unawares as they blearily made their way from the dormitory to the day room.
These corridors were more than a haunt for the destitute patients to trade in dog-ends. They were, like the hospital shop, a meeting place, but quieter, away from the wards, away from the watchful eyes of the staff, and the ward grass, keen to inform on his or her fellow patients for their own gain. The long stay wards being single sex, men and women could arrange to meet here. Here an ’errand boy’ patient might pass a beer drinker scrounging a pound from one of the maintenance staff. A patient might stop a nurse or doctor and ask a favour in relative confidence, or simply find solitude away from the overcrowding and lack of privacy.