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vehicle was afterwards disinfected. But the driver of a
cab was often unaware of the nature of his fare's illness; the
efficacy of any practicable disinfection, moieover, may be
reasonably doubted. Consideration of these and other
objections to the existing law led me, many years ago, to the
conclusion that public vehicles should never be used for this
purpose, and that it would be to the public advantage were
the Asylums Board made the Ambulance Authority for the
removal of the infectious sick of all classes. In 1884, therefore,
I addressed a communication to the Managers, proposing
that they should place their ambulances at the service
of the medical profession, and Medical Officers of Health,
with or without payment, for the conveyance of infectious
sick persons. The Managers replied that they were "not in
a position to undertake the removal of any cases of infectious
disease beyond those which are to be received into the
hospitals under their own control but in 1888 they came
to the conclusion "that the conveyance of infectious cases by
public vehicles should be prohibited by lawand having
expressed willingness to" use the machinery they possess
for the prompt and economical removal of infectious cases,''
the Local Government Board obtained from Parliament the
desired powers, in a section of the Poor Law Act, 1889, the
provisions of which were subsequently re-enacted in the
Public Health (London) Act, 1891.
The use of public vehicles for the removal of infectious
cases is now illegal; the law on the subject, as set out in
section 70 of the Act last named, is explicit, as follows:—
Section 70.—"It shall not be lawful for any owner or driver of a
public conveyance knowingly to convey, or for any other person
knowingly to place in any public conveyance, a person suffering from
any dangerous infectious disease, or for a person suffering from any
such disease to enter any public conveyance, and if he does so he shall
be liable to a fine not exceeding ten pounds; and if any person so
suffering is conveyed in any public conveyance, the owner or driver
thereof, as soon as it comes to his knowledge, shall give notice to the