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diseases to go into the hospitals. The task of persuasion—for that is
the form of "compulsion" employed in ninety-nine cases out of the
hundred—has always been a difficult one, and if to any other reasons that
may disincline a man to go, or send his children, into an hospital,
he should find himself liable to be branded as a "pauper," and to be
disfranchised for doing his duty towards his family and his neighbours,
we may well tremble at the prospect before us, viz., of having to deal
with infectious diseases in the crowded houses of the poor rather
than in hospitals, where alone, as a rule, such cases can be securely
isolated; for I do not think men would be willing to sacrifice their
political rights even to secure gratuitous hospital treatment.
In some districts the "non-pauper" sick are removed by the
sanitary authority, the expenses of maintenance being paid out of the
district rate. In other districts, as in this parish, hundreds of cases
have been removed by the Guardians, and the charges have been
borne upon the poor rate. In every such case, when the recipient
of relief is a voter—whether as a householder or as a lodger—it is
in the power of his political opponents to object to his vote in the
Revising Barrister's Court, and who shall say this will not be done now
that attention has been drawn to the subject ?
As the law stands there is only one way of meeting the difficulty, if
it should be raised, viz., by an arrangement under which the sanitary
authority should recoup the Guardians for their expenditure—by a
payment, that is, from the district rate to the poor rate, or, as I have
put it, by the transfer of money from one pocket to another !
The question having been raised, however, it should be settled in
some way; and the only way, I believe, in which it can be equitably
and permanently settled, is the way your Vestry have indicated—viz.,
by depauperising "relief" afforded in the infectious diseases hospitals.
To obviate the recurrence of such cases, a Bill was introduced into
the House of Commons by Sir Charles Dilke, Mr. Rathbone, and other
members. Your Vestry addressed the President of the Local Government
Board in support of this Bill, petitioned the House of Lords in its
favor, and invited the co-operation of the other Vestries and District
Boards. The Society of Medical Officers of Health, at my instance,
petitioned in favor of the Bill, and I myself submitted to the President of