View report page

39
lose their political rights, as is the case with persons removed by the
guardians, and thus rendered de facto paupers.
The power of recovering expenses given by this Act should, in my
opinion, be very rarely put in force. It is done in other parishes, but
I feel confident that such proceedings, unless managed with the
utmost care and discretion, would cause greatly increased difficulties
in our endeavours to persuade (for we can rarely compel) persons
suffering from infectious disease to submit to removal from their
homes. Such persons are, as a rule, removed to hospitals very much
more for the sake of preventing the spread of disease than for their
own good, and it is certainly perfectly fair and just to throw the expense
of such isolation upon the rates.
So far as this district is concerned no arrangements have been made
by the Vestry with the Asylums' Board. Some correspondence has
taken place on the subject, but everything seems to hinge upon the
definition of the word pauper. Dr. Tripe's opinion, with which Mr.
Sclater Booth concurs, is
“That any person being sick with a dangerous infectious disorder, and not having
a residence of his or her own, or the means of procuring one, and not having the
means of providing proper medical attendance, necessaries, and nursing, is a pauper,
and should be removed to an hospital belonging to the Metropolitan Asylums Board;
that, on the contrary, a person having a house and the money necessary to provide
medical attendance, medicines, food, and nursing is not a pauper; so that if it were
necessary to isolate such a person he or she should, according to the Act, be
removed by the Sanitary Authority."
At present no difficulty has been experienced in Bethnal Green.
Persons suffering from infectious diseases are promptly removed
through the relieving officers, when willing to go to hospital. Sick
persons who are in a position to pay, and are willing to do so, can be
received at the London Fever Hospital and the London Small Pox
Hospital (neither of which institutions is for the reception of paupers),
and where the payment is, for a fever case, two guineas, and for a Small
Pox case, four, irrespective of the duration of the time in hospital.
By the 16th Section of the same Act the Asylums Board is empowered
to provide ambulances for the conveyance of infected persons
to hospital; as, however, almost every board of guardians possesses
ambulances, I do not suppose it will be necessary for the Asylums
Board to provide them as well.