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75
The beds available at the five London hospitals, at the date of
my last annual report, were about 1,400 in number, the recommendation
of the Committee that these Hospitals should
"become in the main Fever Hospitals" having been carried
into effect. These hospitals, the Commission thought, would,
"with the aid of another hospital, which appears to be indispensable
for the East of London, fully accommodate all the cases
requiring London treatment." With a view to give effect to
the recommendation of the Commission, the Managers originally
intended to provide another hospital for East London. This
intention was subsequently abandoned and a site obtained at
Winchmore Hill, nine miles north-east from Charing Cross, on
which the "Northern Hospital" for between 400 and 500
patients has been erected.
The total provision for fever is now nearly 1,900 beds, a
number that falls far short of the recommendation of the
Commission. "On the other hand,'' as we were told by the
Asylums Board in May last year, "the number of fever patients
annually under treatment at any one time during 1886, though
in advance of those of the eight previous years, has not exceeded
742," so that, as it was further stated, "up to the present time
the recommendation that the Managers should provide for 3,000
fever patients has not been justified by subsequent experience."
The recommendation of the Commission, however, has been
justified by the experience of 1887, when the requirements of
the epidemic of scarlet fever obliged the Managers to re-open
the hospitals that had been closed, exhausted the accommodation
at all the town hospitals, compelled them to hire the Plaistow
Hospital at West Ham, and to open the new Northern
Convalescent Hospital at Winchmore Hill, and necessitated
the erection of temporary huts at the Eastern, the SouthEastern,
and the South-Western Hospitals, as well as at the
Northern Hospital, where at one time upwards of 700 patients
were accommodated. In all some 2,700 beds were provided by
the Managers, the maximum number of patients at one time
being about 2,600. What happened in 1887 may happen again,
for the very satisfactory reason that the Managers' Hospitals have
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