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18
Each evening a letter notifying the outstanding cases was forwarded
to the Clerk of the Asylums Board. The outstanding cases were
telephoned every morning, and the fresh cases immediately they were
notified; and in caseswhere the relatives were unable to pay for medical
attendance pending the removal of the patient, they were referred to
the Relieving Officer. The homes were visited every day, and on
Sundays (when Norfolk House is closed) a list of the outstanding cases
was taken over to the Eastern Ambulance Station. No doubt much
misery was caused in the homes of the patients waiting removal. In
one instance a patient, aged seven years, who had been waiting
removal for some days, was too ill to be removed when the ambulance
did arrive, and in the meantime his sister, aged two years, was
notified as suffering from the disease. The first patient ultimately
died.
This want of accommodation, which has arisen from time to time,
is a most serious state of affairs, the working classes having no
means for isolating patients, and thus tends to disseminate contagion.
On the initiative of the Marylebone Vestry a Conference of Representatives
of the Metropolitan Vestries and District Boards was
held on December 3rd. The Asylums Board had been invited to
send members to the Conference, but did not do so.
The following resolution was unanimously adopted:—
" That a communication should be addressed to the Asylums
Board strongly urging them to take steps to immediately open the
vacant beds at the Gore Farm Hospital at Darenth for the purpose
of providing the temporary accommodation required by the local
authorities for scarlet fever patients." By a majority of 24 votes
a second resolution: "That in the opinion of this Conference the
authorities making the rate to raise the funds for the requirement of
the Metropolitan Asylums Board should be entitled to be directly
and adequately represented upon that Board." The resolutions of