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Any agreement which might conceivably be come to between
the London County Council and the Voluntary Hospitals of London
which would limit the beds available for patients outside the
London area would tend materially to increase the number of
cases seeking treatment in our own institutions.
In any case it is likely that many persons who formerly would
have attended at a London Hospital will now seek treatment under
their own Local Authority.
There are other factors—more or less of a minor degree—
affecting this difficult and intricate problem. Whatever is done or
is not done by other Authorities, it is obvious that extra accommodation
will need to be provided as soon as practicable by this
Authority.
In May of last year I suggested that to treat adequately all
cases of sickness which may arise and for which this Council are
responsible, one thousand additional beds would be required.
Since that time wards containing two hundred beds have been
built at the Forest Gate Hospital.
After full and mature consideration of all the facts, I am of
opinion that to meet the situation a further nine hundred beds
will need to be provided. Obviously it is not practicable to state
exactly how many beds are to be used for anv specific disability,
particularly having regard to the variable incidence and virulence
of certain complaints.
The modern hospital accommodation needed for one class of
ordinary disability differs very little from that of another, and it
would at any time, if necessary, be easy to re-organise the staff
for the treatment of any particular disease or combination of
diseases.

* including 40 for surgical Tuberculosis.
If these suggestions were accepted it would relieve the congestion
at Whipps Cross Hospital and make available there some
hundred beds for the reception of acute cases.
The transfer of the suitable mentally defective cases from
Forest Gate Hospital to the Colony for mental defectives at Ockendon,
when built, would eliminate the present overcrowded state
that Hospital.
The majority of the wards at both the Central Home and the
Forest Gate Hospital are out-of-date and very unsuitable for the
modern treatment of the sick.
At present the Council have some forty beds for maternity
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