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I also re-issued a circular, accompanied by instructional papers to all the
ministers of religion in the parish, to the masters of public schools, to the
dispensaries, to the parochial medical officers, and to all our private medical
practitioners, begging of all the favour of their undertaking to distribute
the papers, and from the medical men early information of any case coming
to their knowledge. Handbills, calling attention to the necessity of vaccination
and re-vaccination, were distributed about the parish, and many
thousand copies of directions for the prevention of the disease were given
away in neighbourhoods which were threatened by the epidemic. I am
satisfied that no one could fairly plead ignorance as to what to do, or how to
do what was necessary for the prevention of an attack. Early in the outbreak
the deficiency of hospital accommodation became apparent, and even when
the hospitals established by the Metropolitan District Asylum Board were
opened, the amount of accommodation at first was too limited to allow of
the reception even of our paupers.
It was at this crisis that the Guardians opened the old workhouse as a
temporary hospital, and imperfect and rough as the accommodation was,
it served well as a means of isolation up to the time when the building was
taken up by the Asylum Board as a convalescent hospital. Subsequently
to that, the delays in removing patients became often embarrassing, and,
with all the efforts I could make to prevent it, the disease often spread in
individual houses, from one person to another, often scarcely sparing one of
their inhabitants. There was then often only one thing left for us to do,
and that was to secure, as far as possible, the destruction of the contagion
upon infected premises, when it appeared that the disease had ceased to
spread in them. There was ample power in the hands of the Vestry to
that effect, and I received directions from the Sanitary Committee to put
strictly into force the 22nd and 39th sections of the Sanitary Act, 1866.
The terms of the 22nd section are that "If the nuisance authority shall bo
of opinion, upon the certificate of any legally qualified medical practitioner,
that the cleansing and disinfecting of any house or part thereof, and of the
articles therein likely to retain infection, would tend to prevent or check
infectious or contagious disease, it shall be the duty of the Nuisance
Authority to give notice in writing requiring the owner or occupier of such
house or part thereof to cleanse and disinfect the same as the case may
require; and if the person to whom notice is so given fail to comply
therewith within the time specified in the notice, he shall be liable to a
penalty of not less than one shilling and not exceeding ten shillings for