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110
the acquisition of the Lewisham site, which comprises an
area of 20 acres, and is within a radius of four miles from
the City. At the present writing, the Local Government
Board, after a public enquiry, are considering the Managers'
application for power to purchase the site. The matter is
urgent, for not only is small-pox spreading, but scarlet fever
is showing a tendency to extend more widely. Should there
be an extensive recrudescence of the epidemic, the Managers
will not have the Gore Farm Hospital to fall back upon, as,
after being cleared of fever patients, disinfected and cleansed,
it was opened on the 12th March for its proper use, as a convalescent
small-pox hospital. The available accommodation
for fever and diphtheria, and isolation, comprised, at the close
of the official year, 2,643 beds in the Town Hospitals, to
which must be added 972 beds at the Northern Convalescent
Hospital at Winchmore Hill. Total, 3,615. Should the
scarlet fever epidemic attain the same proportions as in 1892,
this number will be inadequate, and further costly provision
of temporary accommodation will have to be made. It is
possible, moreover, though not probable, that the present
accommodation may be decreased by a decision of the
Local Government Board, not to allow of the use of the
North-Eastern site for the purposes of a Fever Hospital after
August next, the Board, in assenting to the purchase of the
land, having limited the use of it, " without further order " be
made, to a period of twelve months, which will then have
expired.*
What has been said may suffice to show the difficulties
under which, at the beginning of a new official year, the
Asylums Board were carrying on the important work en-
* Whilst this report was passing through the press, the Managers received a
communication from the Local Government Board consenting to the permanent
appropriation of the North-Eastern Fever Hospital, They expressed the opinion
that the hospital should not be used for small-pox patients, and that the Tottenham
Local Board should be allowed to send a limited number of patients to the hospital
upon terms to be settled hereafter.