View report page

97
compulsory notification in London, sufficient evidence to prove."
But from whatever cause or causes the increased demands on the
Managers' Hospitals may have arisen, the Committee "cannot but
regret that the insufficiency of the accommodation provided should
have been such as to compel the Managers at so early a period of
the year as the 13th May, to warn the various local sanitary authorities
that the accommodation at the Managers' disposal would shortly be
exhausted, and that those authorities would be called upon to make
provision for their own infectious sick. In a few weeks the
Managers' worst anticipations were realized, and from about the
middle of June to near the end of the year, the removal of large
numbers of patients was deferred from day to day/' and many urgent
cases were not removed at all. " To this pass the Managers had
been brought, not through any failure to recognise sufficiently early
the immensely increased responsibilities cast upon them, by the
sudden removal, by the legislature, of all restrictions on the admission
of patients to their hospitals, but by the almost insuperable difficulties
encountered by the Managers in obtaining proper sites for the
erection of additional hospitals." The Committee deal fully with the
"difficulties of providing additional hospital accommodation," recount
the steps the Managers have taken, since October, 1890, to procure
sites, and furnish particulars with respect to the North-Eastern
(temporary) Hospital, for 500 patients, erected at Tottenham, at a
cost of £54,500, and of the Fountain (temporary; Hospital, for 400
patients, at Tooting Graveney, erected at a cost of £117,000.
Permanent hospitals, it is stated, are to be erected adjoining this
latter hospital, and also at Hither Green, Lewisham, and at Shooter's
Hill. The Committee lament the loss of the Grangewood Estate at
Norwood, to the acquisition of which the Local Government Board
refused their sanction. This loss, they say, " involves serious consequences,"
as the South side of London presents special features which
render it apparently impossible to find another site in anything like so
convenient a position." Reference is made to the additional
difficulties the Managers have had to contend with, owing to the
increase in small-pox, which compelled them to close the Upper
Hospital, at Gore Farm, Darenth, against the reception of scarlet fever
convalescents, on the 6th March. On the 12th March, small-pox
g