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enquiry the investigation of cases of this sort would probably be
fruitful in valuable results. We await the publication of the
Report, which, whatever its conclusions, cannot fail to be interesting,
and to throw important light on a quœstio vexata.
LEGAL PROCEEDINGS TO CLOSE FULHAM
HOSPITAL.
At the present time (June) legal proceedings are pending the
object of which is to close Fulham Hospital against cases of smallpox.
It is to be hoped that the medical case for the defence will
be got up better than in the Hampstead Hospital Case. The
complainants are landowners and others who feel aggrieved and
allege nuisance detrimental to their interests. In this connexion
the following "case," submitted by the Fulham Board of Works
to eminent counsel, and their "opinion" thereon, will be read
within terest, the object of the Board in stating the case being to
ascertain their locus standi, with a view to proceedings by themselves,
as the Nuisance Authority, to shut up the hospital as
Hampstead hospital has been shut up.
Case.—"The District Board wish to be advised: 1—Whether the Poor Law Board
had any power under the Act of 1867, to make the whole of the Metropolis
into one District, when the Act evidently contemplated the formation of
separate districts for the different parts of the Metropolis. 2—Whether
the Asylum Board can be prevented from continuing the present Hospital
as a receptacle for patients from other parts of the Metropolis, and if so,
what steps the District Board should take for that purpose. 3—Whether
the Asylum Board can be prevented from increasing, in a populous
neighbourhood like Fulham, its accommodation for small-pox patients, even
if it cannot be prevented from receiving the present number. 4—Whether
the District Board, as the Sanitary Authority or otherwise, has the power
to take any (and if so what) proceedings against the Asylum Board to
prevent such continuance or extension of hospital accommodation, and
increased importation into the district of small-pox patients as proposed ?
Opinion.—We have given this case our most careful consideration, and
have arrived at the following opinion: 1—Though the Act, we think,
contemplated the formation of the Metropolis into more than one District
we are not prepared to say the Poor Law Board went beyond their power,
in taking the course they did. Had they made two Districts they would
have been clearly within the law, and the mischief complained of by the
Fulham Board of Works would have remained the same, and probably any
action now taken by the Fulham Board, on the theory suggested, would
result in the Poor Law Board adopting this course. 2 and 3—The recent
judgment of the House of Lords in the case of the Metropolitan Asylum
Board v. Hill and others, has decided that the Asylum Board are in no