The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-30 00:00:00

THE SCN, LONDON, THURSDAY EV.ENING, AUGUST 30, 1866.

THE CHOLERA:

MANSION lIOUSE BELIEF COMMITTED.

This committee, at their meeting yesterday, made
grants in all to the amount of £6OO towards the

further relief of the prevailing distress—namely, to
the district of Hackney old parish, £250 ; the dis-
trict of Li mehouse, £5O, supplementing two previous
grants of £2OO and £lOO ; and to Mile-end New-
town, £5O, in addition to a previous contribution
of £5O. They had also under consideration a pro-
position for assisting the fund now being raised by
Mrs. Gladstone towards providing a convalescent
home and temporary orphanage. From the first
the committee have declined to countenance the
scheme of Mrs. Gladstone for establishing a perma-
nent asylum for orphans,
believing that such an
institution is not wanted while so many of the
kind already exist, and can afford additional accom-
modation ; but yesterday, on the motion of the
Lord Mayor, desiring to encourage the more
practical turn which her benevolent interest
in the hundreds of children made orphans by the
visitation has recently taken, they voted her £250
towards a temporary convalescent home and orphan-
age, which she is now engaged in promoting. There
were present at the meeting, besides the Lord Mayor
Sir Mordaunt Wells, Mr. John Abel Smith, M.P.,
Mr. Alderman Cotton, the Rev. William Rogers,
Mr. Charles Hutton, Mr. H. W. Ripley, Mr. R. N.
Fowler, Mr. Andrew Johnston, Mr. Richard Hoare,
Dr. Andrew Clark, physician to the London Hos-
pital ; and Mr. Joseph Gibbs, the secretary.
The 'deputation from Hackney, to whom the
committee granted £250, was composed of some of
the principal inhabitants, and the statement they
gave of the steps they had taken both for purposes
.of relief and in a sanitary point of view to arrest
the disease, elicited warm expressions of approba-
tion from the Lord Mayor and other members of
the committee. In a population of about 90,000
there had been 89 cases of cholera, 40 deaths, and
1,870 cases of diarrhoea. Besides a general com-
mittee, they had organised local committees in the
various districts, consisting of ministers of religion
of all denominations, relieving officers, medical
officers, and other inhabitants, and systematic
house-to-house visitations had been conducted, not
only with the view to find out the poor people
afilicted with the epidemic or suffering from the ,

consequent distress, and afford them such succour
as seemed necessary, but to see to the condition of
drains, cesspools, and the like, the state of the water
used for domestic purposes, and to the execution of
cleansing and disinfecting processes where they were
urgently required. In a self-reliant spirit they had
organised and conducted this work, both in appre-
hension and in the actual presence of the epidemic,
and it was not until they had exhausted their local
means, obtained from various sources, that they had
applied to the Mansion-house Committee for as-
sistance. Dr. Tripe, the local medical officer of
health, who accompanied the deputation, stated
incidentally that there were in that part of London
4,800 houses, the rent of each of which was under
£2O a year.

Dr. A. CLARK, physician to the London Hospital,
who has often, at the meetings of the committee,
had to lament to some of the local authorities who
came there, and especially those from a poor dis-
trict in Southwark the other day, the little energy
shown, and often the entire neglect, in the cleansing
of drains and cesspools, and in other sanitary works,
took occasion greatly to commend the precautions
taken by the Hackney authorities, as being in a high
degree calculated to arrest the spread of the malady,
and therefore worthy of all imitation.
Of all the relief which the Mansion-house Com-
mittee has been enabled, through the public bounty,
to dispense in money and in kind, to the hundreds
of poor patients and convalescents at their own
homes, in the last three weeks, probably none has
been more suitable or more grateful than the port
wine, arrowroot, corn-flour, and other nourishing
diet which they have given through the local com-
mittee. One of their own body, Mr. A. Johnston,
a member of the firm of Morewood and Co., of
Upper Thames-street, has from the first afforded
warehouse room for all such stores—of course free
of all charge. By the spontaneous kindness of va Ili
-
rious firms of wine merchants three pipes of port
wine have been presented to the committee for dis-
tribution during the last three weeks. This stock,
however, is now all but exhausted, and the committee
with regret have had occasion within the last few days
to say to local authorities who have applied to them
that for the present at least they have little or no
port wine at their disposal for the sick and convale-
scent.

We have been requested to correct a slight error
which crept into the report of yesterday in that part
of the statement made by Mr. John Abel Smith,
M.P., on Tuesday in reference to the funds supplied
to the temporary hospital in Commercial-street,
Whitechapel. It appears that almost the whole
amount hitherto furnished has been supplied by the
Bishop of London's Fund and the Mansion-house
Committee, and the hospital is in want of further
assistance.

At the meeting of the committee on Tuesday, Mr.
E. H. Palmer, a director of the Bank of England,
and a member, with other gentlemen, of the managing
committee of the Hospital, disclaimed for himself
any merit attaching to the attempt to establish it,
which he said was entirely due to Miss Sellon and
the other benevolent ladies acting in concert with
her.