a more airy and retired situation in the town. Without waiting for a reply, within two months the Governor had called for tenders. Macquarie signed the contract for construction of a new hospital on 6 November 1810, with a consortium of businessmen – Garnham Blaxcell and Alexander Riley, later joined by D'Arcy Wentworth. They would receive convict labour and a monopoly on rum imports, from which they expected to recoup the cost of the building and gain considerable profits. The contract allowed them an exclusive right to import 45,000 (later increased to 60,000) gallons of rum to sell, with the excise collected, paid into the Colonial Fund. Their projected profit on the building of the hospital did not eventuate, as a result of many unforeseen problems and the cost of the remedial work required. On its completion in 1816, convict patients were transferred to the new hospital, known as the "Rum Hospital". Wentworth made lifelong friends among his fellow surgeons and colleagues in the Colony, but he remained detached from its social castes and allegiances. Historian James Auchmuty commented that despite his general popularity, comparative wealth and powerful connexions at home, Wentworth mixed little in non-official social life, observing, the liberal views imbibed in the Ireland of his youth, which had resulted in more than usual sympathy with the convict population, and the circumstances of his personal life in the Colony prevented him from fully sharing in the social round. Bank of New South Wales The Colony of New South Wales was established without any cash. Coinage brought to the Colony leaked out rapidly, mainly on ships that called with necessities, clothes, food, and knick knacks. As a result there was insufficient coinage to permit normal business transactions, forcing the population to rely on local promissary notes and rum. On 30 April 1810, Macquarie wrote to Lord Castlereagh:there is one circumstance to which I beg your Lordship’s most serious attention, as on it seems to hinge much of the future prosperity of this colony. In consequence of there being neither gold nor silver coins of any denomination, nor any legal currency, as a substitute for specie in the colony, the people have been in some degree forced on the expedient of issuing and receiving notes of hand to supply the place of real money, and this petty banking has thrown open a door to frauds and impositions of a most