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authorised the Committee to take all necessary steps for equipping temporary hospitals, and any
other measures that might seem to them requisite, for making emergency accommodation available
as rapidly as possible, and to communicate direct with the Local Government Board on their
behalf. With regard to Joyce Green, the Committee explained that in July, 1896, the Managers
submitted to the Local Government Board plans for a hospital for 940 beds ; the Board did not
assent to the proposal; but a partial scheme, for the erection of the administrative buildings for a
hospital on this scale, received sanction. The provision to be made for patients, was at that date
restricted to ten blocks, to contain 436 beds; of the remaining 12 blocks, and the isolation block,
for 504 patients, the foundations and the drains only had been laid, the contract price being
£222,459. The Committee pointed out that the value of the hospital would be more than doubled
by the comparatively small outlay (estimated at £77,339) required for the completion of the whole
of the wards, and they recommended, with a view to steps being taken to that end, as early as
practicable, that it be an instruction to the Works Committee to advise the Board as to the course
that should be adopted for the erection of the remaining 12 blocks for patients, and the isolation
block. The recommendation was adopted; the consent of the Local Government Board was
obtained, and the work was put in hand forthwith. Had this hospital been ready for use in 1901,
the accommodation—a total of about 2,200 beds, including the ships and the Gore Farm " Upper'
Hospital, would have sufficed for the needs of the Metropolis. As it was, the Managers thought
it their duty to make arrangements for providing another temporary hospital (the " Orchard,'
800 beds), on a part of the Joyce Green site. This hospital completed and furnished many months
ago, has not been brought into use. Yet another hospital (the "Lower"), at Gore Farm was
constructed for 850 patients, but it has not been used. Altogether, provision was made for
3,890 cases; 2,040 at Joyce Green and Long Reach (independent of the ships, 250 beds), and
1,850 at Gore Farm.* The requirements of the Metropolis, as estimated by the Royal Commission
in 1892, were for 2,100 patients or, on an emergency, for 2,700. The maximum number of patients
in 1902, and that for a very brief period scarcely exceeded 1,600 and, as already stated, at no one
time since the historic outbreak of 1871, have there ever been so many as 2,000 patients under
treatment in the hospitals.
Summary.—I am indebted to Mr. T. Duncombe Mann, Clerk to the Asylums Board, for the
subjoined statement of existing and projected accommodation for various classes of the infectious
sick; it cannot fail to be read with interest.
" Return showing the permanent Fever Hospital Accommodation existing and projected :—
(i.) Accommodation existing— Beds.
Eastern Hospital 362
North-Eastern Hospital 520
North-Western Hospital 460
Western Hospital 450
South-Western Hospital 866
Fountain Hospital 402
Grove Hospital 522
South-Eastern Hospital 408
Park Hospital 548
Brook Hospital 560
Northern Hospital 652
Total 5,250
(ii.) Accommodation projected—
Southern Hospital 800
Grand Total 6,050
" For Small-pox Patients the existing accommodation is as follows : —
Beds.
Long Reach Hospital 300
Gore Farm Upper Hospital 1,000
Gore Farm Lower Hospital 850
Orchard Hospital 800
Joyce Green Hospital (first portion of wards) 400
3,850
Accommodation in course of being provided is—
Joyce Green Hospital 540
540
Grand total 8,890†
* The estimated cost of the two temporory hospitals (" Orchard " at Joyce Green and " Lower " at Gore Farm) which were
not used for small-pox, was approximately £300,000; that of Long Reach Hospital some £57,000.
† This total is irrespective of the Hospital Ships (250 beds), which are " abandoned," though still afloat at Long Reach.