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ment to obtain Parliamentary powers to enable local sanitary authorities
and the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, to
enter into contracts for the treatment of non-pauper cases of infectious
disease at the hospitals of the Managers. The President intimated
his willingness to do this during the current session, in a Poor-Law
Amendment Bill*; but he reminded the deputation that what they had
now asked him to do he had endeavoured to do in 1877, viz., in the
"Public Health (Metropolis) Bill," which was defeated by the
opposition of the Vestries and District Boards of Works. The President
expressed his opinion that admission into the hospitals should not
entail loss of political status on the recipients of relief, but that their
franchise should be saved by their paying for their maintenance, &c.,
while in the hospital. To this view I venture to express my dissent;
but I have so frequently expressed my conviction of the injustice of
compelling or persuading sick people to go into the hospital to ensure
their isolation for the protection of the public, and then making them
pay for the "relief" so afforded; and your Vestry have so fully endorsed
my views, that I need do no more now than refer to the subject.
I may just mention in passing, however, that if the Vestries had
power conferred on them to contract with the Managers, under section
37 of The Sanitary Act, 1866, the charges for the patients sent into
the hospitals by the Vestries would be borne upon the general rate,
and the recipients of "relief" thus afforded would not be pauperised.
No doubt power will be given to the Vestries, &c., to recover from
the persons so relieved the cost of their maintenance and treatment in
the hospitals: presumably, however, this power will be exercised with
discretion so as not to endanger the success of efforts to stamp out
disease by the isolation of the sick in the hospitals.
The President referred to the possibility of there being established
at some future time a "Common Sanitary Fund" for the Metropolis,
and I entertain no doubt that this plan, which, as your Vestry are
aware, I have also long advocated, furnishes the most hopeful prospect
of a successful issue to our efforts to make proper provision for dealing
effectually with the treatment of infectious diseases.
I venture to think much good will ultimately come of the labours of
the Conference, and that common action on the part of the Vestries will
tend to smooth away the difficulties which at present beset the subject.
* Vide Addendum, page 81, for some account of "The Poor Law Act, 1879," by which
Mr. Sclater Booth has redeemed the promise made to the Deputation.