View report page

19
a clearer definition of authority. In this case, power should he given to
remove all bodies of persons dying of infectious disease to a mortuary, and
also all other bodies in such a state as to endanger the health of persons
living in the house in which the body was retained. The costs of removal
and burial (if needed) should not be divided between the nuisance and
parochial authorities, as now directed; but should be borne by one of the
two.
There are many other clauses in the various Sanitary Acts that require
improvement; but at present, I confine myself to those that have been
especially pressed upon my consideration during the past year.
A District Hospital. 77. This matter leads me to the consideration of
a most important subject, that has several times occupied the attention of your
Board during the past year, viz.: the establishment of a District Hospital.
During the prevalence of relapsing fever, our cases received prompt accommodation
at the London Fever Hospital, so that there was no necessity for
the erection of a local hospital for our especial use.
At the close of last session, Parliament enacted that "every Hospital or
place for the reception of the sick, situated within the limits of the Metropolis,
as defined by the Metropolis Management Act, 1855, shall be deemed to
be within the district of every one of the Nuisance Authorities within the
Metropolis," the restriction therefore, which, under "The Sanitary Act, 1866,"
limited the Magistrate's power of removal of a sick person to a hospital situate
within the district, was abolished, and every hospital, whose managers might be
willing to receive a patient became, practically, a district hospital.
78. Soon afterwards, the newly constituted Metropolitan Asylums Board
commenced the establishment of their various hospitals ; the work went
rapidly forward, and as the hospitals were opened, we availed ourselves freely
(through the prompt instrumentality of the Board of Guardians) of
the accommodation they afforded. There have been, consequently, very few
cases of zymotic disease that we could have removed to a local hospital, which
have not been provided for. I must confess, however, that I have felt much
anxiety, on many occasions, lest the accommodation might fail us, and our
cases might be left in the midst of our teeming population—to become foci
of fresh poisoning and increased mortality. Had the small pox epidemic
been as severe in St. Giles as in some of the northern, eastern, and southern
districts, our situation would have been most grave.
79. Assuming that the Metropolitan Asylums Board will make ample
provision for such of our pauper population as may suffer from infectious
disease, there will remain a certain number of non-pauper sick, for whom
your Board is empowered to provide Hospital accommodation. "What that
number may be, at any time, it is impossible to foresee. In the year 1870,
there were not six cases of small pox, so far as they came under my
knowledge, that were under private treatment, and of these, several were
sent to hospital with the help of the parochial authorities.
80. The persons, not being paupers, who would particularly require
your interferance in this district, are assistants and porters in retail establishments,
and domestic servants, who, for the most part, have not "proper
lodging or accommodation " when attacked by contagious disease. Besides
these, there are the families of the working class population who occupy two
or three rooms, and who might desire the removal of their sick. For all
these, provision is required to bo made by the District Board. We are
dependant for assistance, at present, on the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and
on two or three recent occasions, during tho small pox epidemic, that aid
could not be afforded on account of all the Board's Hospitals having been
full. This may happen again, and embarrass us more in any future emergency
than in the past. Now, I have no hesitation in expressing my conviction,
that, upon the ground alike of convenience and economy, and also of the
difficulty of drawing a dividing lino between those who arc paupers and nonpaupers
in this grade of society, it would be desirable that the Metropolitan