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Hospital. At any rate, plans for extending and improving the
staff and other accommodation, thus materially increasing the
accommodation, have been adopted by the Managers and forwarded
to the Local Government Board for their approval. The
proposed buildings consist of additions to the administrative
block, for the accommodation of nurses and female servants,
quarters for subordinate male staff, additional stores, additions to
laundry, and dressing and bathrooms for nurses, &c. Four
additional wards will be erected. Some 73 members of the
staff, moreover, will be provided for in the new building, many
of whom have hitherto been housed in temporary wooden huts
in the grounds, whilst wards have been converted into sleeping
quarters for nurses, so diminishing the number of beds available
for patients, and giving rise to inconvenience and discomfort.
The nurses', &c., dressing and bathrooms will serve as a
further security against the spread of disease by the nurses
leaving the hospital in infected clothing. The wood staff-huts
in the grounds will be abolished. The approximate estimate of
the cost of the works amounts to £8000. This question of the
enlargement is one of supreme interest to the sanitary authorities
of the district allocated to the hospital which, for all practical
purposes, is as much the hospital of those authorities as if they
had themselves erected it under the provisions of the Sanitary
Act, 1866 (section 37), which confers powers on " the sewer
authorities,"separately or in combination, to build hospitals or
.places of reception for the sick inhabitants of their districts.
The duty of providing infectious hospitals, happily, has fallen
into the hands of the Asylums Board, under the provisions of
the Metropolitan Poor Act, 1867, and the Poor Law Acts of 1879
and 1889, &c., much to the public advantage as well as to the
relief of the sanitary authorities, who could never have properly
.carried it into effect.
ANNUAL REPORT OF THE MEDICAL
SUPERINTENDENT.
An interesting summary of the work done at the Western
Hospital in 1889 is contained in the Tenth Annual Report of the