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55
inclusive), and which were communicated to the Managers, and
the Local Government Board, and also to the several Vestries
and District Boards, by many of which they were formally
approved. The failure of the Managers' proposal may perhaps
not unfairly be ascribed to the results of this action. It may
be well, therefore, in this place, to re-state the views 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 the 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
empowered 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
of 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
(c) "That steps should be taken to alter, by Act of Parliament, the constitution
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 these 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