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14
As the whole of these facts tend to show that the Hospital
did exercise a decidedly prejudicial effect on the public
health of the adjoining neighbourhood, the important questions
arise:— (1). Is a Small Pox Hospital necessarily
injurious to the persons living near it? (2). If not, were
there any especial reasons, as regards the Homerton Small
Pox Hospital, to account for its injuriousness ? As regards
the first, I may say that there is nothing to show that the
Small Pox Hospital at Highgate, so far as I can ascertain, is
injurious to the public health of the locality in which it is
placed. There are also the facts, that a Small Pox Hospital
was opened by Mrs. Gladstone at Brook Road, Upper Clapton,
and two others by the Guardians of this Parish, both
consisting of houses separated only by a few feet from the
public footpath. There was also an iron hospital for Small
Pox cases, erected on a vacant piece of ground adjoining the
two houses at Brook Road, capable of holding with the
houses, about 50 patients, and yet only three cases and no
death occurred in their vicinity, although there was a row of
houses having their back gardens within 30 feet of the iron
hospital. In this case there was but little visiting of friends,
many of the patients coming from a distance, and I think,
at no time were there more than 35 patients in the two
houses and the hospital.
As to the second query, there is no doubt that the
Homerton Hospital is badly placed, being too near the
adjoining houses and grounds; the ambulances were not
disinfected until after I pointed out this source of danger,
and the drivers were in the habit of stopping at publichouses
on their way home. The other sources of danger
are mentioned in the report of the View Committee on the
Hospital. In my report, dated March 24th, 1880, a copy of
which was forwarded to the Managers of the Asylums
Board, and in a second report, dated December 7th, 1880,
(in consequence of which the View Committee was requested
to visit the Hospital), I stated that structural alterations