View report page

43
WHARVES.
The Managers have acquired or constructed three Wharves
for the embarkation of patients, etc., named respectively, North,
South, and West. The North Wharf is at Blackwall, the
South Wharf at Rotherhithe.
The West Wharf, at Fulham, near Wandsworth Bridge,
at which, in the event of an epidemic of small-pox, Kensington
patients will embark for the voyage to the hospital ships at Long
Reach, and the brick hut-hospital at Darenth, but which is also
intended for the accommodation of the West District generally,
has long since been completed. But hitherto it has not been
necessary to bring it into use. Owing to the great distance
between the Western Hospital and the districts allocated to it,
and the South Wharf, at Rotherhithe, to which the patients were
formerly sent for embarkation, the number of miles travelled by
the ambulances was excessive.
RIVER AMBULANCE SERVICE.
The Managers possess, in their three Ambulance steamers,
Bed Cross, Maltese Cross, and Albert Victor, together with the
steam pinnace Sivallow a fleet equal to all probable demands.
REPORT OF THE AMBULANCE COMMITTEE.
Arrangements in connection with the transit of the sick,
.between home and hospital, and back again, are under the control
of a Committee of the Asylums Board, whose Annual
Report states that the year 1889, so far as regards the working
.of the Land and River Ambulance Services, was "uneventful."
The year, however, was "rendered memorable in the annals of
Isolation of Infectious Disorders by a measure passed by Parliament,
viz.: The Poor Law Act, 1889, by one section of which
the Managers' Hospitals have been made available for the
reception of any persons, irrespective of their means, who may
be suffering from small-pox, diphtheria, or fever; whilst, by'
another section, the Managers' Ambulance system has been