View report page

48
that many persons reduced by consumption to a state of
poverty drift into the workhouse, and become a permanent
charge on the rates, often leaving widows and
orphans in a state of destitution, whereas many such
persons might be cured if sanatorium treatment were
made available for them in the early stages of their
diseases.
(10) That whilst the deaths in London, in 1904, from the
diseases admissable to the Board's hospitals (smallpox,
scarlet fever, diphtheria and fever) aggregated only 1,415,
of which 1,094 were due to scarlet fever and diphtheria,
upwards of 90 per cent. being deaths of children under the
age of five years, the deaths from pulmonary phthisis
(consumption) alone, and exclusive of all other tubercular
diseases, were 7,738 in number, and of these a vast proportion
were deaths of adult men and women, more especially men
in the prime of life.
(11) That the money value to the community of the lives
lost every year from this preventable and curable disease is
enormous, and immensely transcends an y possible cost to the
rates by sanatorium provision.
Your Memorialists, having given all these points consideration,
and believing that it would be in the best
interests of the community, earnestly pray the Managers
to take necessary steps, as they may think desirable,
forthwith, and respectfully suggest the following:—
(1) That an Order of the Local Government Board be
obtained to make Section 5 of the Metropolitan Poor Act,
1867, applicable to the case of "poor persons" suffering from
pulmonary phthisis (consumption), and if necessary,
(2) That an Act be obtained to make the provisions of
Section 80 of the Public Health (London) Act, 1891, applicable
to pulmonary phthisis (consumption) as if such disease was
therein mentioned as well as "fever or small-pox or
diphtheria."