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a site being obtained at Winchmore Hill, nine miles north-east
from Charing Cross, on which the "Northern Hospital" for a
large number of convalescent patients has been erected.
The total provision for "Fever" is now 2,308 beds, a number
that falls considerably short of the recommendation of the Commission;
many of the beds, moreover, being in "temporary"
additions to three of the hospitals. On the other hand," as we
were told by the Asylums Board in May, 1887, "the number of
fever patients annually under treatment at any one time during
1886, though in advance of those of the eight previous years,"
did not exceed 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, was
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 of the Town hospitals, compelled them to hire the Plaistow
Hospital at West Ham, and to open the new Northern
Convalescent Hospital at Winchmore Hill: it also necessitated
the erection of temporary huts at the Eastern, the SouthEastern,
and the South-Western Hospitals, and 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 2,611. What happened in 1887 may happen again,
for the very satisfactory reason that the Managers' Hospitals
have attained a popularity certain to lead to increased use of
them in the future by people in need of isolation; the fact being
that the strain in 1887 was due in no slight degree to the greater
proportion of the sick removed to hospital as compared with
previous years. Evidence of this fact is furnished, as regards
our own parish, by the figures set out in the Table at page 25.