View report page

56
suffer to be occupied except in case of urgent necessity), and
800 beds at Darenth. Total, say, 1,200 beds. But it must be
borne in mind that the Managers' Estate at Darenth, comprising
135 acres, is always available upon emergency for the erection
of huts, tents, &c., equal to any probable demand for accommodation.
It may be hoped, moreover, that as the Managers
will remove every small-pox patient out of London, when
removal can be effected with safety—and, happily, this is usually
the case—hospital accommodation in the future will not be
required to the amount provided during recent epidemics.
The Hospital Ships.—A proposal to close the Hospital
Ships was sometime since pressed upon the Asylums Board,
upon the ground that money would be saved if the sporadic
cases of small-pox which occur between epidemic periods
were treated in the London Hospitals, instead of being
taken down the river. The money saving would not be considerable
in any case, and certainly not so large as believed,
for it would be necessary to make provision at three of the
hospitals, (viz.:—the Eastern, the South-Eastern, and the
Western), for the reception of occasional cases, and it is not probable
that the expense of maintaining the necessary staff, for the
male and female wards, in these hospitals, would fall far short of
the cost of maintaining the ships in a state of constant readiness,
now that the expenditure of the Managers appears to be governed
by strict economy. It has to be remembered, moreover, that on
every occasion when small-pox has been treated in the town
hospitals, the disease has spread around those hospitals, with the
effect that for many years, until patients were taken direct to
the ships, small-pox was rarely, if ever, absent from the Metropolis.
The existence of the disease entailed heavy expenditure
in maintenance of the Hospitals in London, and of the Ships at
Long Reach, as well as of the Camps at Darenth, to say
nothing of the money value of an annual average number of
precious lives, upwards of 1,000, sacrificed to the loathsome
disease. Since it has been the rule to take the sick out of