§ MR. ALDERMAN COTTONasked the President of the Local Government Board, Whether he has declined to receive a deputation of Metropolitan Guardians, representing a conference of the guardians of the metropolis in reference to a scheme for the care and maintenance of persons suffering from infectious diseases in the metropolis, upon the ground that such scheme would be an entire reversal of the present arrangements which have been in force for the past sixteen years?
§ SIR CHARLES W. DILKEThe Board have had communicated to them a scheme for the care and maintenance of cases of infectious disease in the Metropolis, which was ordered to be prepared at a conference of Guardians, and they were asked to receive a deputation on the subject. The scheme contemplates that the 30 Metropolitan Boards of Guardians should be empowered to deal with pauper cases "each union in its own locality" that non-pauper cases should 537 be referred to the sanitary authorities; and that those authorities also should provide hospital accommodation. The Metropolitan Asylum Board was constituted in consequence of no adequate provision having been made by Boards of Guardians for cases of infectious disease, and the great difficulty which attended the provision of such accommodation in each union and parish. The Board believes that independently of the expense which the establishment of so large a number of hospitals, each with its own staff of officers, would involve, it would, in the case of many Unions—such, for instance, as the Strand and Westminster—be almost impossible for the Cuardians to obtain suitable sites within the Unions for small-pox cases. Not a single Board of Guardians in the Metropolis, so far as the Board are aware, has as yet expressed its concurrence in this scheme; and it appeared to the Board that there would be no advantage in receiving the proposed deputation.