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upon the District Sanitary Authorities, but which the Managers
had hitherto been called upon to perform in consequence of
the failure of most (all) of such Sanitary Authorities to provide
accommodation for non-pauper patients;" duties which the
Chairman knows it was never in the power of those
authorities to perform; duties, moreover, which all the world
now recognises to be capable of performance, satisfactorily, only
by a Metropolitan authority, such as the Board itself.
Fever Hospital Accommodation.—The total number of beds
for fever patients contained in the Board's hospitals is stated to be
2463. An increase of scarlet fever at the middle of the year
necessitated the re-opening in August of the "Northern"
Hospital at Winchmore Hill, which, by the erection of two
additional pavilions, &c., contains normal accommodation for
480 beds. In September the South-Western Fever Hospital
at Stockwell (402 beds) was re-opened, after having been
closed against the reception of patients for 18 months. The
other hospitals, "Eastern," at Homerton (442 beds), "SouthEastern,"
at Deptford (462 beds), "North-Western," at
Hampstead (415 beds), and "Western," at Fulham (262 beds)
were open continuously throughout the year. Reference is
made to the proposed extension of the Western Hospital, by
providing additional accommodation for fever patients, "the
outbreak of scarlet fever in 1887-8 having shewn that the
hospital was not large enough to receive all the cases arising
in the districts allocated to it;" and a hope is expressed that
before another year has elapsed the hospital will have been
enlarged so as to admit of the reception of all cases that should
be sent to it, "instead of a considerable proportion being, as
at present, removed to other and more remote hospitals." The
Northern Hospital is intended for the use of convalescing
patients from the other hospitals; the Managers having directed
(a) that the control of the transfer of patients should be left
in the hands of the Clerk to the Board, acting under instructions
of the Ambulance Committee, and (b) that every
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