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48
large amount of accommodation for the chargeable poor suffering from consumption had been
provided by the Metropolitan Boards of Guardians. With a view to ascertaining the extent of
this accommodation, I had made inquiry (in June) of the medical superintendents of the 27 Poor-law
infirmaries, as to what accommodation had been " provided in separate wards " for—
(a) Cases of consumption in the early and hopeful stage, and
(b) Chronic cases beyond hope of recovery.
Replies were received from all but three of these institutions—Hackney, St. George Hanover
Square, and Woolwich, which may be summarised as follows:—
No special accommodation has been provided at five infirmaries — Chelsea, Mile End,
Paddington, St. George-in-the-East, and Whitechapel. Special accommodation, amount not
stated, is provided at four infirmaries—City of London, Hampstead, Lewisham, and Wandsworth.
St. Marylebone was about to open three special wards.
In the remaining fourteen infirmaries, accommodation has been provided as follows—
Bermondsey 84 beds.
Bethnal Green 120 beds.
Central London Sick
Asylum 35 beds (at Hendon).
Fulham 80 beds.
Greenwich 23 beds.
Holborn 96 beds, and a separate
ward for cases
in the early stage
of the disease.
Islington 120 beds, and others in
open-air galleries.
Kensington 90 beds.
Lambeth 92 beds.
Poplar and Stepney
Sick Asylum district
28 beds.
St. Giles, Camberwell 200 beds.
St. Pancras 24 beds for early
cases; an indefinite
number for chronic
cases.
Shoreditch 43 beds.
Southwark 170 beds.
a total of 1,205 beds in fourteen, or about a moiety, of these institutions*
It may be remembered that in July, 1900, it was ascertained by the Medical Inspector (for
Poor Law purposes) of the Local Government Board, that there were in the Metropolitan infirmaries
and workhouses 1,562 cases of tuberculosis, including about 260 extra-Metropolitan
cases. So that provision now exists for chargeable persons suffering from consumption adequate
to the present demand, so far as mere numbers go.
As regards non-chargeable sufferers, it may be mentioned that three voluntary hospitals,
for consumption and diseases of the chest, in the Metropolis, contain 630 beds; viz., Brompton
Hospital, 321; City of London Hospital, 164 beds, and Mount Vernon Hospital, 145 — irrespective
of the country branch at Northwood.† 100. And this, apparently, is all, or nearly all,
the public provision for a more or less curable disease from which there are probably some
31,000 sufferers (including about 11,000 "chargeable" poor) in a population approaching five
millions; compared with 10,000 beds in the general hospitals of the Metropolis, and a like number
for infectious diseases in the hospitals of the Asylums Board, including those now in course
of construction or re-construction.
The General Purposes Committee of the Asylums Board were possessed of all the foregoing
information when, in February of the present year, they gave final consideration to the
prayer of the Memorial presented by the representative deputation ten months previously, on
which they reported as follows:—
"On the 15th April, 1905, we were instructed to consider and report to the Board upon
the memorial which the Managers then received from the Metropolitan Branch of the
Incorporated Society of Medical Officers of Health, and in which they were urged to provide
hospital accommodation for the treatment and isolation of patients suffering from pulmonary
phthisis.
* The Guardians of Bethnal Green, Fulham, Lambeth and Paddington occasionally send suitable (i.e. hopeful) cases to
extra-Metropclitan sanatoria for treatment
† Not only is the accommodation totally inadequate, but it is also extremely difficult of access under the system of
subscribers' letters; the patients who are fortunate enough to get letters having to "wait their turn"—so long, in some
instances, as to deprive them of all but the hope of being cured.