View report page

92
time, 40 per cent, of the patients had been admitted without
a Relieving Officer's order, a ratepayer announced his intention
to appeal, and he did appeal, to the Auditor, to surcharge
the cost of maintenance in all such cases. Previously, however,
and in order to avoid the delay involved in the process
t
of getting a surcharge remitted, in the event of the Auditor
making one, the Managers applied to the Local Government
Board to sanction the expenditure so incurred, under the
power conferred by section 3 of the Local Authorities
(Expenses) Act, 1887, which enacts that " Expenses paid by
any local authority whose accounts are subject to audit by a
district auditor, shall not be disallowed by that auditor if
they have been sanctioned by the Local Government Board."
The Board sanctioned the expenditure accordingly, with an
intimation that it was the intention of the President to introduce
a Bill for the purpose of removing any doubt as to the
legality of expenditure of the character indicated, an intention
which was carried out by the insertion of a clause in the
Poor Law Act, 1889, which provides in a practical, if not
altogether satisfactory manner, for the settlement of the
question. The question has since been settled in an entirely
satisfactory manner, and in complete accordance with my views
as set out in the above mentioned report, by the Public Health
(London) Act 1891, sec. 80. The hospitals are now free; nonpaupers
are lawfully admitted with the greatest facility, (the
stigma of pauperism was removed in 1883 as I claimed it should
be, in that same report written fifteen years ago), and all the
expenses incurred in tlu- treatment of the sick are now defrayed,
as I then urged that they should be defray-ed, out of the Metropolitan
Common Poor P'und. Your Vestry having endorsed
my views on these important subjects, and commended them
to the other Metropolitan Sanitary Authorities, by whom they
were as a rule approved and supported, may well be congratulated
on the satisfactory solution of the several questions
now arrived at.