View report page

13
shall in future become chargeable to the Sanitary Authorities, to the
great relief of the Common Poor Fund, those persons only who are
actually known to have received parochial relief being recognised by
the Poor Law Authorities as rightly chargeable to the Guardians as
pauper patients.
Your Committee, on the other hand, have always contended
that all patients who themselves are unable to pay, or whose friends
cannot pay, for their admission to the Highgate Small-pox Hospital,
or the London Fever Hospital, are entitled as necessitous persons to
admission and treatment at the hospitals of the Board at the expense
of the Poor Rate.
Your Committee therefore:—
Recommend the Vestry, that a reply be sent to the Metropolitan Asylums
Board agreeing generally with the conclusions contained in Paragraphs
(a), (b), (c),* of their Committee's Report, but dissenting from the view that
any necessity exists for a change being made in the mode of admitting
persons suffering from infectious disease into the Hospitals of the Board, or
in respect to the chargeability of the patients whose maintenance at
present is, in the opinion of the Vestry, very properly thrown upon the
Common Poor Fund of the Metropolis.
II.—Your Committee have also considered the communication received
from the Vestry of Kensington, and the accompanying Report of
their Medical Officer of Health, both of which relate to the subject
already referred to in this Report—viz., the admission of non-pauper
cases of infectious disease into the Hospitals of the Asylums Board.
The proposals of the Kensington Vestry are, however, more
startling in their character than the milder suggestions of the
Asylums Board, for, with the exception of paragraph A, † which
simply desires that the Board may be empowered to provide Hospital
accommodation for infected patients of all classes, the gist of the
several other paragraphs, marked "(b),(c),(d),(e)," of the Kensington
Report, is the desirability, in their opinion, of the transference of
all the expenses incident to the maintenance and treatment in the
Hospitals of the Asylums Board of every case of infectious disease
which may arise, from the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund to a
* See Note B, page 15. † See Note C, page 16.