[679] Order of 10th February 1875, art. 4.
[680] Circular of 8th July 1887, in Seventeenth Annual Report, 1887-8, p. 9.
[681] Circular of 2nd January 1877, in Sixth Annual Report, 1876-7, p. 33.
[682] Poor Law Act 1879 (42 & 43 Vic. c. 54, sec. 15).
[683] 46 & 47 Vic. c. 35.
[684] The Central Authority was apparently loth to accept the situation. The statute was deliberately made only a temporary one, expiring in a year. But it was annually renewed, and in 1891 the provision was made permanent in the Public Health (London) Act of that year. Meanwhile the Poor Law Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vic. c. 56, sec. 3), had expressly authorised the admission of non-paupers, entitling the guardians to recover the cost from the patients if the guardians chose; but making their expenses, in default of such recoupment, chargeable (as were the expenses of the pauper patients) on the Common Poor Fund. We cannot discover that any attempt was made to recover the cost from the patients; and in 1891 the very idea was abandoned.
[685] Annual Reports of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, 1889-1906. In 1888, in anticipation of the necessary amendment of the law, the Central Authority authorised the admission of diphtheria cases (Local Government Board to Metropolitan Asylums Board, October 1888; Local Government Chronicle, 27th October 1888, p. 986; Poor Law Act 1889 (52 & 53 Vic. c. 56, sec. 3); Order of 21st October 1889, in Nineteenth Annual Report, 1889-90, p. 96). The boards of guardians outside the Metropolis failed, we believe everywhere, to respond to the invitations of the Central Authority to provide similar accommodation for infectious diseases. In 1876 the inspector was doing his utmost, by special Order of the Central Authority, to induce the Manchester, Salford, Chorlton, and Prestwich Boards of Guardians to unite in establishing out of the poor rates a hospital for infectious diseases, which should admit non-paupers on payment (MS. Minutes, Manchester Board of Guardians, 17th February 1876).
[686] In 1889, for instance, the Central Authority provided that, in cases of sudden or urgent necessity, the medical superintendent or his assistant should admit patients on his own responsibility, without order from the relieving officer (Special Order to Mile End Old Town, 10th October 1889).
[687] Under the Metropolitan Poor Amendment Act 1870, the cost of the maintenance of adult paupers in workhouses and sick asylums, to the extent of 5d. per head per day, was thrown on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund. To two-thirds of the Metropolitan unions, including all the poorer ones, this operated as a bribe in favour of indoor (or infirmary) treatment as against domiciliary or dispensary treatment. Mr. Longley wished to go much further. In order practically to compel all the Metropolitan boards of guardians to provide these elaborate and expensive hospitals, he recommended that the whole cost of indoor maintenance of the sick, when in infirmaries separated in position and administration from the ordinary workhouses, should be made a charge on the Metropolitan Common Poor Fund (Mr. Longley's Report on Indoor Relief in the Metropolis, in Fourth Annual Report, 1874-5, p. 54).
[688] Memorandum on Nursing in Workhouse Sick Wards, April 1892; in Twenty-fifth Annual Report, 1895-6, p. 114.