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contract with the Managers for the reception of "non-paupers," and they may
recover the cost incurred by them in the maintenance and treatment of the
persons in hospital; but the Vestry, being strongly of the opinion that isolation
of the sick, as the means necessary for checking the spread of disease, should be
paramount to all other considerations, propose to invite the Conference to
consider—Whether the time has not arrived for giving effect to the view they have
long entertained that the cost of maintaining infectious sick persons in hospital—
persons, that is, isolated for the public good—should be defrayed out of a common
fund levied on the Metropolis, as the fire brigade expenses are defrayed ? and
Whether the assistance thus rendered to the sick in hospital should not, like
public vaccination, be exempted by special enactment from the disabilities
consequent on the receipt of parochial relief, even in the case of patients removed
to hospital by the Poor Law Authority?
In provincial towns which possess local acts and infectious disease hospitals,
the authorities have power to require payment for maintenance and treatment of
the sick, but the Vestry learn on good authority that the tendency grows stronger
day by day, not to enforce such payment, but rather to consider the public safety,
secured by the isolation of the sick, an adequate return for the outlay incurred.
It would often be unreasonable to enforce payment for maintenance in hospital.
It is notorious, for instance, that in many cases of what formerly was the most
loathsome and most virulent of infectious diseases, small-pox, the complaint is so
wonderfully modified by vaccination and re-vaccination, that the "sufferers,"
though most dangerous to all unprotected persons with whom they may come in
contact, can scarcely be described as "sick," and are under no necessity of
submitting to confinement, excepting from a sense of duty, and, as the law
requires, for the public safety. This being so, the Vestry hope that the Conference
will adopt the view of this subject which the Vestry submitted to the Conference
on "Hospital accommodation for non-paupers," held at the Cannon
Street Hotel in 1878, viz., that "no compulsory payment should be exacted from
persons who are removed to hospital for the sake of isolation." Practically this
view is now acted on to a large extent, for the Managers of the Asylum Board
freely admit all comers sent by the Guardians of the Poor—and in some parishes
(Kensington is one of them) nearly every patient is removed through the agency
of the Guardians, no claim being made for repayment of expenses, the Guardians
being animated by a view of the supreme importance of isolating the sick at any
cost. The Vestry have reason to believe that the same spirit animates the
Nuisance and Poor Law Authorities of the Metropolis generally, repayment of
expenses being rarely, if ever exacted; and they desire to see the sanction of law
accorded to what has now grown into a well-established practice.
The Memorandum concluded by stating that should the foregoing
views meet with the approval of the Conference the Vestry
believed that the desired results might be obtained by the adoption
of certain resolutions, which were ultimately agreed to, and will
be found below in the report of the proceedings of the conference.