The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-22 00:00:00

THE CHOLERA.

MANSION HOUSE RELIEF COMMITTEE.

Up to last evening the Mansion-house Committee
had made grants amounting in all to £4,050 in the
last fortnight to local committees towards relieving
the distress in the various districts in the metropolis
infected with the prevailing epidemic, and they have
reason to believe that the money has been, and is
still being, judiciously dispensed in mitigating the
suffering among hundreds of the poorest poor who
have been, in one shape or other, its victims, and
that the disease has thereby been sensibly arrested.
They continue to devote themselves to the work,
meeting for that purpose from day to day.
At 1 o'clock a meeting of the Working Commit-
tee was held at the Mansion-house, the Lord Mayor
in the chair, there being also present Sir Mordaunt
Wells, the Rev. William Rogers, the Rev. F. G.
Blomfield, Mr. Charles Hutton, Mr. H. W. Ripley,
Mr. A. Johnston, Mr. Alderman Cotton, Mr. R. N.
Fowler, Mr. Samuel Hoare, and Mr. W. J. Maxwell.
The LORD MAYOR took occasion to say that when
the fund was set on foot they did notknow the extent
to which it might go. They had thought it would
be best administered through the agency of local
committees, and such committees had on the sugges-
tion of the Mansion-house Committee been formed
in various parts of the infected districts, and were
doing a great deal of practical good. To these
committees that at the Mansion-house had made
preliminary grants of money, telling them at the
same time to come again if more should be wanted
to relieve the prevailing distress, and many of them
had availed themselves of that invitation, and
had received additional grants, proportionate
to the apparent need. He wished it to be
generally known to the local committees that if they
wanted more money, the Mansion-house Committee
were prepared to make further grants from week to
week so long as there was any distress to relieve.
He thought it desirable that should be publicly
known, because he observed that the Rev. Mr.
Driffield, the rector of Bow, in a letter written
in a temperate, gentlemanly spirit to the news-
papers, while acknowledging the assistance given
by the Mansion-house Committee to the local com-
mittee for that district, of which he is chairman,
had called attention to an advertisement soliciting
public subscriptions towards a fund they were
raising in that locality. He (the Lord Mayor)
thought there was hardly any necessity for such a
step, seeing that the Mansion-house Committee
were prepared to give, to the extent it might appear
to them to be wanted, more money to the local
committee of that or any other district for distri-
bution among cholera patients and their families.
The treasurer, chairman, and members of the
committee of the Great Northern Hospital applied
for a grant. The hospital, they said, had a large
and energetic medical staff, and a devoted band of
trained nurses who night and day cheerfully attend
to the cholera cases. Separate wards are set aside,
and special arrangements have been made from the
moment the sad epidemic appeared. The hospital
is in the centre of a poor and populous district,
teeming with men, women, and children employed
in the numerous railway works and factories, also
in canal and manufacturing occupations. Im-
mediate relief is granted to every poor person with-
out ticket or recommendation, and since the out-
break of cholera the indoor and outdoor depart-
ments are never without a large succession of poor
creatures begging relief. The Committee made a
grant to the hospital of £lOO.
A deputation from Bishopsgate, at the head of
which was Mr. Stapleton, a Common Councilman,
attended before the Committee. Although they
said the cholera had not visited the parish as heavily
as some parts of London further east, it had not been
free from its attacks, and there had been also a vast
amount of diarrhoea, among the poor. It was there-
fore in precautioaary measures that their chief ex-
penses had been incurred. At the very first appre-
hension of the epidemic their society threw open,
on its own responsibility, the doctors' shops, and
arranged with the chief medical men among them
for the visitation of the sick. All the cases had in
that way been promptly attended to. Nourishment
had also been distributed under medical direction to
all those threatened by or recovering from choleraic
disease who were too poor to procure necessary sup-
port for themselves. The committee voted them
£75 and ten gallons of port wine.

From a communication made yesterday to thecom-
mittee it appears that great distress has prevailed
among the Roman Catholic people in Spitalfields
and the neighbourhood since the outbreak of cholera.
No less than 125 cases had come under the notice
of the Rev. J. Rocher, the Catholic clergyman of
St. Anne, in that district, during the last foul. weeks,
many of which had proved fatal, and numbers of
families had been thrown into a state of complete
destitution, some of them being deprived even of
the common necessaries of life. The committee
granted Mr. Rocher, who attended with the mem-
bers of a local committee he had formed, £5O and
10 gallons of port wine, to be distributed among his
own people suffering from cholera.
The Rev. W. RODGERS, Rector of Bishopsgate,
and a member of the committee, called attention to
the necessity of establishing places temporarily where
poor convalescents from cholera could be housed
and treated in fresh air, if possible, away from their
miserable homes, until they had completely re-
covered. He had reason to know that Mr. John
Abel Smith was prepared to take a leading part in
such a movement, and an offer had been made to
the committee by a benevolent gentleman of a large
.unoccupied brewery in Whitechapel or the Com-
mercial-road for a given time, for such a purpose,
or as an auxiliary cholera hospital. The difficulty
in carrying out a project of that kind lay in the
repugnance which some people had to the esta-
blishment, even for a time, of cholera hospitals or
houses for convalescents near their abodes. In
Bishopsgate they had a very good refuge for cholera
patients, but the local authorities wanted a place
for the treatment of convalescents in fresh air, and
with that vices sent a man to see a place near Ho-
merton, which they thought might suit. On his
errand being known, however, he was received with
a kind of howl, and the aborigines or native savages
there positively pelted him, (Laughter.) He now
asked Dr. Clark, a member of the Committee, whe-
ther it would do to have a convalescent home in the
building in Commercial-road, which had been offered
the Committee.

Dr. A NDREW CLARK, physician to the London
Hospital, replied that any convalescent hospital
would be better than none ; but if they could have
it in a rural district, it would be infinitely better. if
the building in Commercial-road could be adapted
to the purpose, and proper attention were given to
diet, and especially to the space allotted to each
patient, that would be a far preferable arrangement
to returning patients recovering from the disease, on
leaving the London Hospital, to their own homes.
It was a fact that for a certain time after convales-
cence the discharges of a person who had been
afflicted with cholera were still capable of propagat
ing the disease. That being so, it was important
not to send such persons to their own homes;
where they might become foci for disseminating the
poison ; but to a convalescent hospital, where the
discharges might be easily disinfected. It was a
pity it should not be publicly known that it was
quite possible, provided all the requisite hospital
precautions were taken, to send 100 cholera patients
into a particular district and not do any harm to the
neighbourhood.

The sum received at the Mansion-house yesterday
towards the fund amounted to upwards of £4OO, and
among the subscriptions were Mr. Peter Maze, per
Barnett, Hoare, and Co.
Daniel and Co. , £100; Messrs. Thomas
Madame Z , per Mr. H. W. Ripley, £5O ;
arifi, £5O ; Mr. Leonidas Zarifi, £1010s.;
Messrs. Goad, Rigg, and Co.
Montagu, and Co. , £5O; Messrs. Samuel,
, £2O ; M. N.,
Dalgety, Ducroz, and Co., £2l ; collection at St.
120 ; Messrs.
Peter's, Pimlico, through the Rev. Thomas Fuller,