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or might not occur." But the views of the Small-pox Hospitals
Committee were allowed to prevail. With a view, however,
to the immediate provision of additional fever accommodation,
authority was given to the General Purposes Committee (i.e.,
the Board sitting in Committee), " to ascertain and report
whether the Managers could temporarily hire any building for
the treatment of scarlet fever cases in the (then existing)
emergency ? " The quest was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the
Small-pox Hospitals Committee, though reluctant to surrender
possession of any portion of the Gore Farm Hospital (possibly
because it might have necessitated the erection of a temporary
small-pox hospital at Joyce Green Farm, and so have indefinitely
postponed the erection of the intended permanent hospital),
prepared a large number of wards at the Upper Hospital,
which was vacant of small-pox, and ready for use for scarlet
fever if only the Managers had said the word. Once more I
referred to the subject, viz., in my twelfth report (December
10th, page 158), but this time to state that the deficiency of
accommodation had, with the decrease in scarlet fever prevalence,
diminished, for the time, almost to the vanishing point.
When the need for the beds at Darenth appeared to be passing
away, a number of the Sanitary Authorities awakened to the
desirability of utilising them for the scarlet fever patients
who, at the moment, were adequately provided for in the town
hospitals, and with one consent they began to make request to
the Asylums Board, (at the meeting held on December 7th),
that the Gore Farm hospital should be opened for the reception
of fever conválescents. The St. Marylebone Vestry, meantime,
had convened a conference of the Sanitary Authorities, which,
held on the 3rd December, adopted resolutions comprising:
(1) a request to the Asylums Board to open the Gore Farm
Hospital at Darenth, " for the purpose of providing the
temporary accommodation required by the London Local
Authorities for the cases of scarlet fever urgently requiring
removal from the crowded families and houses in which
they are spreading the disease:" and (2) an opinion of the