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disease, and I am happy to state that the Committee entering fully
into my views, gave such instructions to their Medical Officer as will,
I trust, remedy the evil complained of. It will probably be remembered
that under the 26th section of the Sanitary Act, 1866, power
is given to a justice to order the removal to a hospital within the
district, of any person suffering from a dangerous, contagious, or
infectious disease, and being without proper lodging or accommodation.
The section was rendered abortive by an omission to which
your Vestry, at my suggestion, called the attention of the Local
Government Board two or three years ago. The omission in
question has since been rectified, and now a justice's order is made
upon the person legally in charge of the sick person, and disobedience
of it entails a pecuniary penalty. So far good. But another
difficulty arose owing to the fact already alluded to, that few cases
of scarlet fever come under the notice of the District Medical
Officers, viz., by application for medical relief being made to the Relieving
Officer, through whom alone admission can be obtained
into the Hospitals provided by the Metropolitan District Sick Asylum
Board. A Justice, however, is empowered to make an order for
the admission of a patient, on a medical certificate signed by a legally
qualified medical man, into any such hospital within the district,
at the cost of the nuisance authority which, in this case, is your
Vestry. For the purposes of the Act the entire metropolis is constituted
a single district, and the nuisance authority is empowered
to arrange with the superintending body of any such hospital for
the purpose. No such arrangement, however, had been made, and
it appearing to me that the time had come when an arrangement
should be made to secure the removal of proper cases to the hospital,
even though they should not be in receipt of parochial relief;
such cases, namely, as are "without proper lodging or accommodation,"
and the treatment of which in the crowded habitations of the
poor, where they could not be isolated, must always be a source of danger
to the public health, I applied to the Local Government Board to
learn if the Hospitals of the Metropolitan District Sick Asylum Board
were available for the reception of cases removed at the cost of the
nuisance authority? The answer was in the negative, and your
Vestry thereupon proceeded to make an arrangement with the
London Fever Hospital, for the admission therein of the class of
cases referred to; and although hitherto no cases have been sent to
the hospital, that the arrangement has not been fruitless the following
illustration may suffice to prove. A child was taken ill at
a small house in a somewhat crowded court. The parents and four
other children shared a single and very small room with the sick
child. The father's occupation brought him a good deal into contact
with private families; he was, nevertheless, strongly opposed
to the child's removal to the hospital. The child was not a parish
patient, but as he was obviously (in the words of the Sanitary Act,
1866) "without proper lodging or accommodation," I felt it my
duty to take steps to obtain a magistrate's order for his removal to
the London Fever Hospital. The parents, finding that the child