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72. The Metropolis Local Management Act, sect. 83, gives you the
power to take a refractory defendant before a magistrate, for neglect of your
Board's order, "to make or provide a water supply apparatus or other connected
works," and the Magistrate has no option but to inflict a penalty.
Difficulties may arise, I understand, even in the working of this Act. The
simple fact, however, that the Act especially intended to give authority in
the case upon sanitary grounds, is so defective, shows the necessity of
improved legislation.
The Power of Removal of Sick Persons to a Hospital. 73. By the 37th
section of the Sanitary Act, 1866, your Board is empowered to build a
Local Hospital, or to contract for the temporary use of any place for the
reception of the sick. It is to he regretted, however, that the 26th section
of the same Act, which provides for the removal of such sick persons to the
Hospital, makes it necessary to obtain the order of a Justice, who can give it
only on the condition that the sick person is without proper lodging or
accommodation, or lodged in a room occupied by more than one family." The
latter part of this clause is too restricted, as it might be held to determine
the sense in which the words "proper lodging or accommodation" should be
understood. In that case, the clause would not work in this district, without
the concurrence of the patients or their friends. Hitherto, we have had no
necessity to attempt the enforcement of the Act. It is expedient that the
phraseology employed in the next following clause of the same Act, with
reference to the removal of dead bodies, should be employed in this clause
also, viz: If the person suffering from 'infectious disease be retained in a
"room " in which persons "live or sleep," or if he be lodged in a house,
occupied by more than one family, and in which isolation from the healthy
cannot be secured. The clause so amended, would not reach decent households;
but it would give a more salutary control over ordinary lodginghouses.*
Notice to be given of Zymotic Diseases in Families and Schools, fyc.
74. Power also is wanted to require parents and friends to give notice
of the occurrence of zymotic diseases in their families, and to make it compulsory
on the heads of schools, to report the absence of scholars on account
of contagious disease, so that the necessary steps might be taken to prevent
its dissemination. In the event of the recovery of the pupils, they should
not be received into the school without a certificate of fitness from a
medical practitioner. The same rule should be observed in the case of workmen
engaged in workshops and factories.
75. It is also important that the managers of all schools should be
empowered by law, to prohibit the entrance of any unvaccinated pupils into
their schools, and that they should be required to give notice to the Public
Yaccinator or other sanitary authority, of such unvaccinated person. The
provision for re-vaccination, under the 8th clause of the "Vaccination 'Act,
1867," at certain ages and under certain specified conditions, should be made
more imperative, as experience has amply shown its necessity.
The Removal of the Dead. 76. The 27th section of the Sanitary Act,
1866, relating to the removal of dead bodies, also requires simplification and
*Since the above paragraph was written, an application has been made to Sir
Thomas Henry, at Bow Street Police Office, for his order to remove a person suffering
from small pox to Hospital, such person living at the time with his wife in one room
at 22, Princes Street, Drury Lane, in which house three other cases of small pox had
occurred. Two of the sufferers had died. Sir Thomas Henry declined to make the
order, on the ground stated above, that the clause did not give him the power under
the circumstances of the case. A second application has been made to Mr. Vaughan,
to order the removal of a man who was suffering from small pox in Kennedy Court,
and who was lying in a room which served as a passage to another room where four
men slept; but Mr. Vaughan considered that as the second room might be kept closed,
and thus fenced off from the sick man, he had no power to interfere. It thus appears
that the law does not confer on the Magistrate any power of removal, in case of
persons lying sick in ordinary lodging-houses.