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78
Joyce Green Estate.—On this estate the Managers
proposed to provide beds for 940 patients, but the Local
Government Board declined to sanction provision being made
for more than 400 patients. Plans of the proposed hospital
for this number have been prepared and sanctioned.
It thus appears that the Metropolis is endowed, in possession
or in early prospect, with accommodation for upwards
of 6,000 patients suffering from fever and diphtheria, a
number more than double that recommended by the Royal
Commission, irrespective of many hundred beds at Gore Farm,
generally available for convalescent cases in the abeyance of
small-pox. Time only can determine whether this provision
will suffice for the requirements of the metropolis. For smallpox
patients the accommodation is or will be, to the extent
of some 1,900 beds: a number, I repeat, considerably below the
recommendation of the Royal Commission (2,700), but which I
am sanguine will suffice, seeing how much more effectually this
disease has been controlled since the practice was adopted
of removing the sick out of London for isolation and treatment,
initiated upon my advice, in May, 1881, and subsequently perfected
by the Managers, who, since 1884, have ceased to use the
town hospitals for the isolation of small-pox, removing direct
from their homes to the ships all patients suffering from this
disease—with what beneficent results let the statistics of
mortality set out at page 29 testify.
"Deficiency of Hospital Accommodation."—Under
this heading I have had occasion in several previous reports to
deplore the unavoidable necessity of keeping at home, for
considerable periods in many cases, numerous patients who
could not be admitted to the hospitals owing to want of
accommodation. I am pleased to be able to report that no
difficulty of this kind was experienced during the past year,