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42
available for an additional hospital for convalescent patients—
having in view the probable exigencies of a fresh epidemic, and
taking into account the requirements of London as a whole.*
After the report was in print, the Asylums Board, being so
much divided with regard to the necessity and the character of the
proposed permanent hospital, appointed, through the General
Purposes Committee, which comprises the whole of the Managers,
two sub-committees, from among the majority and the minority
respectively, to consider and report on the communication from the
Local Government Board, and with instructions to submit alternative
schemes, with the arguments in favour of each. The
minority sub-committee (chairman, Bev. G. A. M. How) reported
in terms substantially identical with the views of the Local
Government Board, while the majority sub-committee (chairman,
Captain Douglas Galton), considering that the Local Government
Board had vetoed the only suitable site on the estate—viz., the
upper plateau—and, holding the lower plateau, where the existing
huts stand, to be unsuitable for a hospital, declined to recommend
the Managers to erect any additional accommodation on the site
of the camp. The Managers referred the two reports to the
Small-pox Hospital Committee for consideration, the committee
being empowered to take professional advice as to the practicability
and advisability of carrying into effect the suggestions of the
minority sub-comnrttee, the chairmen of the two sub-committees
being added to the committee for the purposes of this reference.
The Managers also transmitted the reports to the Local Government
Board in reply to their communications on the subject, dated
24th August and 5th January. The Board, under date 16th May,
acknowledging receipt of copies of the two reports, stated that
* In my monthly reports for 1886—viz., No. 2, page 13, No. 6, page 39, No.
9, page 60, and No. 13, page 92, the subject of small-pox hospital accommodation
was fully discussed, especially in connection with the divergence of views manifested
in the correspondence between the Local Government Board and the
Metropolitan Asylums Board.