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diseases, upon a Metropolitan Fund, as compared with
that of contracts with individual Sanitary Authorities as
proposed, under the provisions of the Poor Law Act,
1879,” and suggested “ the desirability of legislation to
give effect to such plan.”
There was all the more ground for this request, seeing that
at the great Conference of Sanitary Authorities held in the Town
Hall in March, 1881,—which was presided over by that distinguished
member of your Vestry, the late Major-General
Boileau, R.E., F.R.S., the following resolution was unanimously
adopted, some 30 out of a total of 39 Sanitary Authorities being
represented thereat, viz.:—
“ That the admission into hospitals, for the purpose of isolation, of persons
suffering from infectious disease, and being without proper lodging
or accommodation, is eminently desirable in the interests of the
public and should be encouraged ; that payment for the assistance
given in hospitals to such persons removed thereto for isolation, by
the Nuisance or the Poor-Law Authority, should not be enforced ;
that the giving of such assistance should not entail on the recipients
the loss of any social or political status, and that the cost of
hospital treatment of such infective sick persons should be made a
charge on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund.”
The above resolution was (on April 23, 1881,) submitted to
the President of the Local Government Board by a deputation
comprising delegates of the Vestries and District Boards (not one
of these Authorities dissenting), supported by the Council of the
British Medical Association, the Society of Medical Officers of
Health, the Public Health Section of the Social Science Association,
and the National Health Society, the late General Boileau
being spokesman. Subsequently to the joint action of the
Vestries and District Boards above referred to, the views which
your Vestry had been the first to expound, several years previously,
to the effect that admission to infectious disease hospitals should
not pauperise the sick, found expression in section 7 of the
Diseases Prevention (Metropolis) Act, 1883, which, once and for
ever, depauperised the relief given in the Managers' Hospitals.