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of the houses, no such thing happened. My own impression is
that the infective agency operating in the first cases was contained
in, and conveyed through, the sewers and house drains,
and that the illness in second cases in the same streets may
have been due to the infected condition of the sewers. In three
of the streets, where eight cases occurred, the sewers, as before
stated, have blind or dead ends, which always involve the risk
of a heavy pressure of sewer-gas on the drain inlets of the
adjoining houses, as I pointed out in a Special Report on the
drainage of the Elsham Road and its vicinity (April 1875.)
I shall add but one fact, and it is one of some importance,
which came to my knowledge after the close of the enquiry. A
case (seventeenth of the series) occurred in a family of seven persons,
the milk being supplied from the suspected dairy, and within
the period to which the other cases belong (viz., on December 10),
the sick person, however, beiug the only member of the family
who never took milk. I do not wish to attach too much importance
to this case, but, taken in conjunction with the facts of
other cases, (viz., of persons being affected who scarcely ever
touched milk), I think it lends, negatively, some support to the
theory by which I have sought to explain the outbreak in a manner
opposed to my first impressions.
HOSPITAL ACCOMMODATION FOR NON-PAUPER
INFECTIOUS SICK.
In my last annual report I entered fully into this important
question, which has made little or no progress since the date of
that report. Happily, the question is no longer one of pressing interest
for this parish, as, owing to the cordial relations that exist
between your Vestry and the Guardians of the Poor, the hospitals
of the Asylum Board, of which the Guardians' officers hold the keys,
are freely open to the non-pauper sick; the Guardians having
recognized the necessity of isolating cases of infectious disease,
and acting on the principle that it is better, and in the long run
cheaper, to secure isolation, at the general cost for the general good,
than to allow disease to spread from the want of it. It is obvious,
moreover, that if the public purse must bear the charge, it matters
little out of which pocket the money is taken, whether,
that is, your Vestry pay out of one rate or the Guardians out of
another. Without a hitch or obstacle of any kind, therefore,
every case that we desired to have removed has been removed, and
our thanks are due to the Guardians and to their officers for their
co-operation with us in promoting the sanitary interests of the
parishioners.
But in some districts of the Metropolis, from whatever cause,
things do not work so smoothly, and the proper mode of dealing