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administration of the hospital is expensive,pro rata, having
regard to the number of patients, as the present staff, with a
lew additional nurses and other subordinate officers, would be
sufficient for a Hospital twice the size. Therefore, and
taking into account the large and increasing population of
the district, as well as the increasing use made of the hospitals,
the Committee for the hospital reported, in 1888, that it was
advisable to add considerably to the existing accommodation,
and they proposed that beds should be provided for at least
400 fever cases, irrespective of Ihose to be allotted to smallpox.
The proposal to enlarge the hospital met with opposition
from local authorities and owners and occupiers of property
in the neighbourhood; the Local Government Board, however,
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 eourse, they added, would seem
calculated to meet objections that had been raised bv
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