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11
Hospitals for the Reception of Persons of the Non-Pauper Class
suffering from contagious diseases.
The present time, owing to the comparative freedom of the metropolis
from epidemic disease, is most opportune for considering the best mode
of providing accommodation for persons of the non-pauper class suffering
from fever, small pox, scarlet fever, diphtheria, or cholera, and who cannot
be treated at their respective homes without endangering the health of the
surrounding neighbourhood.
The pauper class is amply provided for in the existing hospitals under
the supervision of the Metropolitan Sick Asylums Board, but that class of
patients who are able to pay for such accommodation as a hospital only can
give, are unable to obtain admission therein, except under such disadvantages
circumstances as persons, in tolerably good position, are unwilling
to be placed. Persons can only avail themselves of the advantages of the
Asylum Board Hospitals by making themselves paupers; and they must be
sent thither by the Relieving Officer of the district. Such a degradation, as
is implied by becoming a pauper, we have no right to inflict on any one,
purely because such person has the misfortune to be attacked with a contagious
or infectious disease. The law therefore, before it can be applied
without injustice, must be so amended as to render the mere admission and
treatment of a patient in an asylum hospital not an act of pauperism, and
shall not, from that circumstance, disqualify a person from exercising his
right of citizenship.
The matter of non-pauper hospital accommodation is certainly
of grave importance, and I am glad to find that public attention has
recently been directed to it. I trust that during the next session of
Parliament power will be given by an Act to enable the local authorities to
contract with the Asylums Board for the admission of patients into the
hospitals under their management, at such a rate of payment as will leave
little or no margin upon which to hang a suggestion of pauperism. A
non-pauper patient may be thus defined—a patient who is both able and
willing to pay for hospital treatment, and only requires to be informed
where he can obtain it upon payment. A pauper may be defined as one
who requires relief in the form of hospital treatment and cannot pay for it.
Accepting this definition it will be readily perceived how very small a proportion
of the sufferers during an epidemic are non-paupers.
Then the next question comes in what way is it expedient that hospital
accommodation should be provided for the non-pauper cases? In this
district, under pressing circumstances, a temporary hospital for the