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30
Parish of St. George the Martyr, Southwark.
Dear Sir,
The Metropolitan ASylums Board,
London, W.C.,
23rd December, 1895.
I have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 29th ult., and, in
reply, I have to state that on the 28th ult. I forwarded to the Local Government
Board an explanatory statement with regard to the admission of the cases to which
you refer, and which I find are the same as set forth in your letter to the Local
Government Board, dated the 15th ult., of which that Board forwarded me a copy
on the 20th ult.
I enclose, for your information, a copy of my letter to the Local Government
Board.
Yours faithfully,
T. BUNCOMBE MANN,
Clerk of the Board.
Dr. Waldo,
Medical Officer of Health,
St. George's, Southwark.
Metropolitan Asylums Board,
Norfolk House, Strand, W.C.,
28th November, 1895.
Sir,
I submitted to the Managers, at their meeting on the 23rd inst., the letter
from the Local Government Board, dated the 20th inst. (No. 140,139a), with which
the Board forwarded a copy of a letter addressed by the Board on the 11th inst. to
Dr. Waldo, Medical Officer of Health of the Vestry of St. George the Martyr,
Southwark, together with a copy of his reply.
In reply to the request of the Local Government Board to be furnished with the
observations of the Managers upon the question raised in the correspondence, 1 have,
in the first instance, to point out that the cases mentioned in Dr. Waldo's letter as
affording "specific evidence in support of the suspicion raised" in his report of the
22nd ult. are cases of diphtheria only, and do not include any case of scarlet fever.
Of these four cases of diphtheria, 1 find that one—viz., F......... L was
conveyed to the South Eastern Hospital, in the private brougham of the medical
practitioner, who had been called in to attend on the patient, and the superintendent
of the hospital, in the exercise of the discretion conferred upon him by Article 4 of
the Local Government Board Order, dated 10th February, 1875, admitted the patient.
The remaining cases, the Local Government Board will observe from: the statements
made in Dr. Waldo's letter of the 15th inst., were removed from the out-patient
departments of general hospitals, and the officials of the Managers having no knowledge
whatever of the social circumstances of the patients, gave directions for their
admission into the Board's hospitals.
I may add that no urgent case of diphtheria was excluded from the Board's
hospitals as a consequence of the patients referred to.
I have also to state, for the Local Government Board's information, that a copy
of Dr. Waldo's report was forwarded to the Managers by the Vestry of St. George
the Martyr, Southwark, on the 23rd ult., and that on the 13th inst. I wrote to the