View report page

168
some of the Unions sent cases by arrangement to the Small-Pox
Hospital at Highgate. This institution, which had been established
in 1746, was extended in 1850 so as to provide accommodation
for about 100 Small-Pox patients. It remained down to the
year 1870 the only Small-Pox Hospital in London.
The obvious difficulty and danger attending the treatment of
persons suffering from Small-Pox in the same institutions in
which other destitute persons are practically forced to reside led to
the enactment of certain provisions of the Metropolitan Poor Act
of 1867, and to the issue under that Act of an order of the Poor
Law Board virtually uniting the whole metropolis into one district
for the purpose, amongst others, of providing hospital accommotion
for paupers suffering from Small-Pox.
Although the Metropolitan Asylums Board had power to
provide hospital accommodation for paupers only, they found it
practically impossible to confine the inmates of their hospital to
this class, owing to the epidemic which prevailed at and after
the time when their first hospital was opened in December, 1870.
In 1879, by the Poor Law Act of that year, power was given
to the Metropolitan Asylums Board to contract with the local
authorities for the reception into the Board's hospitals of any
persons suffering from Small-Pox or other dangerous infectious
disorder within their districts, but it was not until 1889 that express
power was given to the Asylums Board by the Poor Law Act of
that year to admit persons reasonably believed to be suffering from
Small-Pox who were not paupers.
It will thus be seen that the hospitals of the Asylums Board
have been practically the only isolation hospitals available for
London, though to some extent the Highgate Hospital has served
the same purpose.
After the hospitals established by the Metropolitan Asylums
Board had been employed for some time for the reception of