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59
taking into account the large and increasing population of the
district, as well as the increasing use made of the hospitals, the
Committee considered it advisable to add considerably to the
existing accommodation, and they submitted that beds should be
provided for at least 400 fever cases, irrespective of those to be
allotted to small-pox.
It is needless to say that the proposal to enlarge the hospital
met with opposition from local authorities and owners and
occupiers of property in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, the
Local Government Board, having given due consideration to the
representations made to them, informed the Managers that they
would not be justified in the public interest, in withholding their
general assent to the plans which had been submitted for the
extension and improvement of the staff and other accommodation.
They pointed out at the same time that in any future extensions
at the hospital, it would be necessary that the rule providing a
clear space of forty feet between the boundary of the premises
and the nearest portion of a building occupied by infected persons
or things, should be strictly observed. They further observed
that it would also appear desirable that each hospital district of
the Metropolis should, as far as possible, bear the burden of
providing for its own cases, and that, with this view, hospitals
should not be closed even when the number of patients is not
sufficient to occupy more than a small number of wards. This
course, they added, would seem calculated to meet objections that
had been raised by residents in the neighbourhood of these
hospitals, when patients had been conveyed there from distant
parishes. It had, moreover, been rendered still more desirable
by the inclusion of diphtheria among the diseases to be treated in
the hospitals, since long journeys of patients suffering from this
disease were attended with peculiar danger. The Committee tor
the Hospital, it may be added, expressed their concurrence with
the views of the Board. The first intention of the Managers was
to obtain the additional land required, to the north of the existing
site, by acquiring a portion of the Lillie Bridge Grounds, but they