View report page

37
originally formed with the view of restricting Fulham Hospital for
the use of the Borough of Chelsea, have commenced proceedings
with a view to closing the hospital altogether.
The first decision of the House of Lords having been adverse to
the Managers the question arose whether they should proceed with
the other Appeal (No. 1), which is for a new trial of the cause
without the condition attached by the Court of Appeal below, in
granting a new trial, viz., that the Managers should pay a certain
portion of the plaintiffs' costs? The General Purposes Committee
of the Board have reported, advising "that the Solicitors be
directed to proceed" with this Appeal; the Managers have, by the
casting vote of their Chairman, decided on taking this step, and
the President of the Local Government Board has signified his
approval of their decision, not improbably because it relieves the
Board from the responsibility of taking action in the matter, e.g.,
by promoting fresh legislation.
It has been stated that the prosecution of the Appeal (No. 1) will
not involve a large expenditure; the Court of Queen's Bench, moreover,
has expressed an opinion that there ought to be a new trial;
the Court of Appeal is also in favour of a new trial, but on condition
of the Managers paying certain costs to which they object,
and against which (as a condition of a new trial) they have
appealed.
The Managers are certainly placed in a delicate position by the
decision of the House of Lords, for, as the Chairman of the Committtee
is reported to have said,'' the finding of the jury is a standing
verdict against them, giving encouragement to everybody to attack
them," whereas "if this verdict were set aside by an order for a
new trial, their position would assume a totally different character."
The Times, referring to the decision of the House of Lords,
remarks that "the public are chiefly concerned to know whether,
as a matter of scientific fact, a hospital for small-pox, however well
conducted, is necessarily a source of infection in its neighbourhood,
and therefore a nuisance, not at common law, but in the special
sense defined by the Sanitary Acts as being something injurious to
health? . . . Throughout the various appeals and counter-appeals
in connexion with the Hampstead Hospital, this essential question
has been kept in the background; " the evidence given " by certain
medical men that in their opinion the hospital was a source of
D D