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61
the Managers and to the Local Government Board, and also to the
several Vestries and District Boards, by many of which they were
entirely approved. The failure of the Managers' proposal may
perhaps not unfairly be ascribed to the results of these proceedings.
It may be well, therefore, in this place, to recall the
principles that your Vestry had adopted with reference to the
hospital treatment, &c., of the infectious sick—not merely before
the issue of the Managers' proposal in 1884, but anterior to the
passing of the Poor Law Act, 1879, as set out in a communication
addressed to the Sanitary Authorities, the Managers,
and the Local Government Board in November, 1884. They
were as follows :—
(a) That the Managers of the Metropolitan Asylums Board should be
powered to make adequate provision of hospital accommodation for
infectious disease for all classes of the population in need of such
accommodation.
(b) That patients should be admitted into the Managers' Hospitals upon
certificates signed by any duly qualified medical practitioner.
(c) That as the hospitals of the Managers have been established for the
common good at the public cost, no compulsory payment should be
exacted from persons whom the Sanitary Authority may deem it
necessary or expedient to remove to the hospitals for the purpose or
isolation.
(d) That all expenses incident to the maintenance and treatment of such
persons in the hospitals should be defrayed out of a Common
Sanitary Fund, the Metropolis being treated for the purpose as a
single district; and
(e) That steps should be taken to alter, by Act of Parliament, the
stitution of the Board, by severing its connection with pauperism, in
so far as relates to the treatment of infectious disease, and by providing
for the election of a certain proportion of the Managers by
the several Sanitary Authorities, i.e., the Vestries and District Boards
of Works.
Your Vestry, when communicating the above views to the
Managers, invited them (and.not for the first time) to
“ Consider the greater simplicity and superior advantages
of the plan of throwing the entire expenditure incurred
by the Board, in the hospital treatment of infectious