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Metropolis will be treated as a whole, without regard to particular
districts, should the disease appear, and this institution is too far away
to be of use to Marylebone Parish, it being held unsafe to remove
patients to a greater distance than one mile from their homes.
"The Asylums Board are organising arrangements for providing hospital
accommodation in all parts of the Metropolis; their own hospitals
being quite full of scarlet fever and other cases; and they are also
acquiring hand-ambulances for the removal of the sick.
"It will be for your Committee to consider whether something more might
not be done to put this Parish into a state of preparedness, as by the
appointment of a number of temporary Assistant Sanitary Inspectors,
who should make a house to house visitation in the poorer districts,
with a view to the discovery and the abatement of nuisances due to
filth, which may be said to be the food and the breeding-nest of the
Cholera germ.
"Assuming that it would be deemed proper to issue some simple directions
for the guidance of parishioners in the prospective emergency, as was
done in 1883, I have prepared a leaflet, entitled "Precautions against
Cholera," a proof of which has been sent to each member of your
Committee, and now beg to recommend that if the said leaflet be
approved, arrangements be forthwith made for circulating it in the
Parish.
"It may be mentioned that in the event of an outbreak of Cholera in
London, the Local Government Board will issue 'Regulations,' as in
1866, defining the duties of the Sanitary Authorities, which would
include the provision of hospitals in their several districts, supplementary
to those provided by the Asylums Board, as well as of refuges to
which the, as yet, unattached or healthy inmates of infected houses
could be removed, in cases where the sick are unfit to be removed to
hospital. Other duties which would devolve on these Authorities are,
the provision of medical attendance and nursing for the sick, in their
homes and at the hospitals, and of necessary attendants at the refuges.
It would be their duty also, to provide medical attendance, medicines,
disinfectants, &c., for the use and service of poor persons attacked
with diarrhœa, &c., and unable to provide these requisites for themselves.
The expenses arising from such action would be, to a large
extent, chargeable to the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund, at the
discretion of the Local Government Board."
The Committee approved the leaflet I had prepared and
ordered five thousand copies for distribution in the Parish.