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the Limehouse Board of Works have memorialised the Managers
has already been fully considered and dealt with, and
that the Managers used their best endeavours to obtain
through the Local Government Board, the requisite authority
to receive into their Hospitals, and, if necessary, powers to
provide additional accommodation for, Patients other than
those of the Pauper class. It now rests with the several sanitary
authorities, either collectively or individually, to take the
matter up and deal with it as they may think best "
The Managers having taken thn subject into their consideration,
resolved to forward the memorial of the Limehouse Board of
Works, together with a copy of the Report thereon of the Committee
for General Purposes to the several Sanitary Authorities:
and they asked them to inform the Managers as to "how far they
agree with the Limehouse Board of Works in the views which
they have enunciated, and upon which they have memorialized the
Managers ?"
The reply of your Vestry to this question was forwarded in the
shape of the Report of the Special Purposes Committee (March 20),
on communications of a similar purport received from the Managers
in 1877, and in which the views of the Limehouse Board of Works,
and the views now apparently entertained by the Managers, appear
to have been anticipated. The report was as follows:—
"Your Committee have to report that they have very carefully considered
the several suggestions contained in the report sent from the Managers,
and have had before them a report presented by this Committee
to the Vestry on the 17th January, 1877, submitting that 'it is inexpedient
and unnecessary for this Vestry to provide hospital accommodation,
seeing that the whole of the cases can be so easily dealt
with by extending the powers of the Metropolitan Asylum Board so
as to enable them to provide for all persons in the Metropolis suffering
from small pox or other infectious disease, and requiring isolation
in hospitals.'
"Your Committee agree with the Managers that adequate provision for
the isolation and treatment of epidemic infectious diseases in the
Metropolis does not exist, and that such provision could be best made
in a comprehensive and systematic manner by one Central Au'hority
acting for the whole Metropolis, not only for pauper patients, but for
other classes in need of hospital accommodation.
"Your Committee are also of opinion that the Metropolitan Asylum
Board should be such Central Authority, its constitution being altered
and adapted to its enlarged duties and responsibilities; that the expenses
of persons, not being paupers, admitted into the hospitals on
the recommendation of Vestries and District Boards under sec. 37
of tho Sanitary Act, 1866, should be defrayed out of a Metropolitan
Bate or Common Fund, and that the relief so granted to persons
suffering from infectious disease should not be deemed parish or poor
relief, and should not involve the loss of any rights possessed by the
said persons."
My opinion having been asked at the same time, the views I