MR. O'KEEFFE (Limerick)I beg to ask the President of the Board of Trade if the ships of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, carrying mails and passengers from this country to the West Indies, are totally unprovided with hospital accommodation; if ships of the same company carrying passengers and emigrants to Brazil and the River Plate are similarly unprovided for, though carrying from 400 to 600 Spanish and Portuguese emigrants, with whom English and Irish passengers come daily and hourly in contact, and calling at Rio de Janeiro in the height of the yellow fever season; whether, in the event of an epidemic breaking out, the unoccupied passengers' rooms are temporarily converted into hospitals, and if, failing this means of isolation, the only resource left is by hanging blankets, soaked in a solution of carbolic acid, round the patient; if this was the existing state of things when two men recently died of yellow fever on board the Neva, at the Mother-bank Quarantine Station, Southampton; and, if it is in the power of the Government to enforce regulations for securing health on board passenger steamers?
§ THE PRESIDENT OF THE BOAED OF TEADE (Sir MICHAEL Hicks Beach,) Bristol, W.The ships of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company carrying passengers to the West Indies and South America from this country do not carry from the United Kingdom more than 50 passengers as defined by the Passenger Acts. They are, therefore, not passenger ships under those Acts, and no other ships are required by law to provide hospital accommodation. The Spanish and Portuguese passengers referred to are embarked abroad, and do not make the ships passenger ships under the Passenger Acts. Space is always provided on board the ships of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, which can be turned into hospitals in the event of an epidemic breaking out. The cabin where an infectious patient is lying is always surrounded by blankets steeped in a solution of carbolic acid or other powerful disinfectant. In the cases referred to on board the Neva the patients were removed to cabins surrounded in this manner. The Board of 1700 Trade has no power to enforce regulations for securing health on board passenger steamers unless they are also passenger ships under the Passenger Acts.