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36
Daughter of a Knight, aged 16 years.
Daughter of a coachbuilder, aged 4 years.
Daughter of an upholsterer, aged 6 years.
Daughter of an Irish peer, aged 10 years. *
Daughter of a licensed victualler, aged 3 years.
Daughter of a tobacconist, aged 3 years.
Daughter of a fruiterer, aged 4 years.
Daughter of a tailor, aged 19 months.
Son of an engine driver, aged 5 years.
Son of a cabman, aged 3 years.
Hospital Provision for Diphtheria.—Reference was made
above to the fact that five of the 30 deaths from diphtheria took
place in General Hospitals. The cases had been removed to the
hospitals in question, simply because the Managers of the Asylums
Board are not authorised by the Order of the Local Government
Board to admit to their hospitals persons suffering from this
disease. The Managers being willing to receive such cases, and
applications for their admission having been made to them from
time to time, they put themselves into communication with the
Local Government Board on the subject. The Board, doubting
its power under the Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867, to authorise
the Managers to admit cases of diphtheria, consulted the Royal
College of Physicians with regard to the question Whether persons
suffering from diphtheria cm be regarded as patients suffering
from "fever" within the meaning of section 69 of the Metropolitan
Poor Law Act, 1867? and the opinion of the President of
the College, Sir William Jenner, was given in the following
terms:—
"If the words in the Act had been 'for patients suffering from fevers,' I
should most certainly have considered Diphtheria to be included under
the term 'Fever,' but the separation of Small-pox from Fevers seems
to signify that the word 'Fever' was intended to include only fevers of
a special type, those cases, that is to say, to which the word 'Fever' is
specially applied, as Scarlet fever, Typhus fever, and Typhoid fever."
In these circumstances it appeared to the Local Government Board
to be desirable that, if cases of Diphtheria were to be admitted to
* An imported case from the Isle of Wight.