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12
The Local Government Board appear by their letter dated Jan. 2,
quoted above, to have acquiesced in the views of the Managers,
thus practically withdrawing the opinion expressed in their letter
to the Guardians (Sept. 6, 1876) that the 42nd section of the Poor
Law Amendment Act, 1876, provided for the non-pauper sick.
We were thus left pretty much in the same position as when in
1875 I addressed a letter to the Local Government Board
with a view to ascertain whether we might not arrange with the
Managers for the admission into the Asylums of certain cases of
non-pauper sick at the cost of the Nuisance Authority—and without
the intervention of the Poor Law Officials? I was especially
desirous that the time of the District Medical Officer should not be
needlessly occupied, and that the certificate of any duly registered
medical practitioner should be accepted as evidence of the nature
of the infectious disease—a plan that would often save valuable time,
and prevent delay in the removal of the sick. The special enquiries
I addressed to the Board were—(1) "Whether it was absolutely
necessary that the Poor Law Medical Officer should sign the
medical certificate required to enable the removal of fever and
small pox cases to the Poor Law Hospitals? and (2) whether a
patient could be admitted into the said hospitals at the expense of
the Sanitary Authority under section 26 of the Sanitary Act,
1866?" The Board's reply did not specifically state that we
could not make an arrangement with the Managers for the admission
of non-paupers; but this was its real purport, for they stated in
effect that the only modes in which persons can properly obtain
admission into the hospitals were by an order signed by the
Believing Officer or the Master of the workhouse, and upon a
certificate of a District or Workhouse Medical Officer; in other
words as a pauper. And so it has continued up to this hour, for
the halting provisions of the 42nd section of the Poor Law Amendment
Act, 1876, have not been carried into effect by the required
order of the Board, so that with few exceptions, for which we are
indebted to the courage of certain Medical Officers of Health
in sending cases to the hospital doors, and the discretion of the
Medical Superintendents in admitting them (such action on
either side having no warrant in strict law), the sick
have been admitted as paupers and through Poor Law agency,
though in rare cases the Guardians have received or enforced
some after repayment in part of the expenses incurred in the
relief of the sick.
At the point we have now reached, the Managers of the Asylums
Board having issued their prohibitory circular of the 24th Oct,
thus defining their legal position as an integral part of the Poor
Law system, proceeded to take up the whole question in a broad
public spirit, their attention having been drawn to it by communications
from various vestries "relative to the provision of hospital