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duty, however, to state that a different view appears to have been
taken by the Paddington Vestry, and by the Willesden Sanitary
Authority, these bodies having proposed to your Vestry to join with
them in providing a hospital for, say, 50 small-pox cases. I could
not advise concurrence in this scheme, which would involve great
outlay without corresponding advantages. The Poplar District
Board of Works provided a hospital at West Ham, at a cost of
£18,000, but did not even proceed so far as to furnish it, and they
are now anxious to get the Asylum Board to take it off their hands.
I believe your Vestry came to a sound decision in recommending
that the Asylum Board should be empowered and encouraged to
make provision of hospital accommodation for all cases of infectious
disease occurring within the Metropolis, and requiring to be
removed from home for the purpose of isolation.*
THE HAMPSTEAD HOSPITAL CASE.
As amatter of interest to your Vestry as a "Nuisance Authority,"
responsible for carrying out the Sanitary Acts, the recent decision
of the House of Lords in this celebrated cause is deserving of notice.
There were two appeals, and that which has now been decided was
the Appeal (No. 2) by the Managers of the Asylum Board for a
reversal of the injunction restraining them from using the hospital
in such a manner as to create a nuisance to the plaintiffs in the
original cause, or either of them. The plaintiffs did not receive
the injunction originally prayed for restraining the Managers from
using the building as a hospital for small-pox, &c.; the practical
effect of the injunction, however, as it stands, and confirmed as it
now is by the highest Court of Appeal, will probably be to close
the hospital permanently against the reception of the sick for whom
it was provided. An incidental result of the decision, moreover, will
be the encouragement of aggrieved persons to persevere in attempts
to close other hospitals; and of this we have an example in our
midst, for since the decision, representatives of an Association
*Report of Special Purposes Committee (20th March, 1877), on a reference of a
circular letter from the Asylum Board on the subject of hospital accommodation.
The Law and Parliamentary Committee had previously come to a similar conclusion
on a similar reference. The subject is dealt with at length in my Annual
Report for 1876-77, published in October, 1,877.