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32
It was in May that the indications became clear that the
disease was about to assume an epidemic form. On the 21st
day of that month the cases under the charge of the Asylums
Board were 170 in excess of the available accommodation in
the Town Hospitals.* Many patients had already been
drafted to the Northern Convalescent Hospital, Winchmore
Hill, and it was manifest that the time was at hand when it
would again become necessary to provide temporary accommodation,
the Managers having been unable to obtain a site
for the erection of a much needed additional Fever Hospital,
in conformity with the recommendation of the Royal Commission
in 1882. The General Purposes Committee were of
opinion at this time, that all available accommodation would
be exhausted by the beginning of July, a date which experience
has shown to coincide with the commencement of
the scarlet fever season, and that the Managers would have to
provide additional accommodation for "possibly a thousand
patients," and the necessary staff, and that to be of any use
a large portion would have to be ready before the middle of
August.
At the end of June, the beds at all of the hospitals were
full, 186 patients having been admitted in three days, and the
number of scarlet fever cases under treatment being 2,063.
At this time the Managers were about to open the Gore Farm
(convalescent small-pox) Hospital, at Darenth, for convalescent
scarlet fever cases, to the number of 600, and were making
provision for the erection of temporary huts at some of the
Town Hospitals. The Local Government Board, in giving
sanction to this costly and unsatisfactory substitute for the
permanent hospital, which they had not enabled the Managers
*The admissions to the Fever .Hospitals in the four months January—April,
were 2,770, a greater number by 342 than the highest number admitted in the
corresponding months of any previous year, whilst the total number in the Managers'
Hospitals at the beginning of May (1,686), the bulk of them being scarlet fever
cases, was higher by 473 than on the corresponding day in any previous year,