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47
The Hospital Ships have been maintained in constant
readiness for use. A proposal to close them 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 London itself
instead of being taken down the river. The money saving would
not be considerable in any case, and certainly not so large as
supposed, for it would be necessary to make provision at, say,
three of the London hospitals for the reception of such
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 prevailed around those hospitals, with the
effect that during many years, and 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
1n 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 precious lives, sacrificed to the
loathsome disease. Since it has been the rule to take the sick
out of London altogether, a plan which I proposed in 1881, the
epidemic, which was chronic before, has practically ceased. If
this result be due to the fact of removal, which has been made
possible by the existence of the Ships, no better investment of
public money was ever made. The Managers, by a large majority
rejected the proposal to close the Ships, and they have kept
steadily to their resolution to remove every case to the Ships,
when removal is not likely to prove prejudicial to the patient's
prospect of recovery.
Extravagant outlay, properly so described, is to be condemned,
but it is true economy to be prepared for every emergency,
and, in my opinion, the Local Government Board did wisely in