The Sun.
London, England, 1866-08-29 00:00:00

THE CHOLERA.

MANSION HOUSE RELIEF COMMITTEE.

Last night the fund which is being raised by the
Lord Mayor, acting in concert with the committee
of• bankers, merchants, and clergymen in the City,
amounted to nearly £16,000, which has been sub-
scribed in three weeks. Of that sum upwards of
£5,000 has been dispensed towards the relief of the
distressed through the agency of local committees,'
besides large quantities of port wine, arrowroot,
corn flour, and Materials for beef tea; and £5,000
has been set aside for the maintenance of children
made orphans by the visitation, leaving an avail-
able balance of about' one-third of the whole sum
collected for the further relief of the distress, which
balance is being daily increased by the donations
which continue to flow in. From the accounts
furnished yesterday and on Monday by the local
committees, there can be no doubt that the disease
continues to subside in the districts of the eastern
parts of London where it has been most prevalent,
but that it is being succeeded by typhus fever in
some quarters, induced by the wretched state of
poverty to which many of the people have been
reduced, and which, indeed, would seem to have
become the normal condition of large numbers of
them. From the _first the. Mansion-house Com-
mittee, while deeply sympathising with the pre-
vailing penury, have been careful to prevent,
as far as they could, any application of the
funds entrusted to them solely for the relief of
distress consequent upon cholera and the nourish-
ment of poor patients and convalescents, towards
the mitigation of ordinary pauperism or of the
poverty which borders upon it, holding it to be the
duty 9f the parochial authorities. Within the last
few days they have had occasion to insist most
strongly on the distinction being maintained, as well
from a sense of the duty they owe to the subscribers
to the fund as from a desire to avoid weakening in
the least the responsibility which attaches to the
guardians of the poor, -especially at such a crisis as
the present.
Yesterday, at the meeting of the working com-
mittee, the Lord Mayor in the chair, Sir Mordaunt
Wells took occasion to say that, in company with
Mr. J. A. Smith, M.P., he had paid a visit on the
previous evening to the Vestry-hall, Limehouse,
while the money and stores allotted by the Man-
sion-house committee were being dispensed by the
local authorities, a complaint having reached the
Lord Mayor that some unseemly disturbances took
place on those occasions, and that poor, emaciated
women in search of relief were much knocked about
in the crowd. Sir Mordaunt said Mr. Abel Smith
and he went to the place where the local committee,
consisting of 15 gentlemen, met and saw many of
the poor people, but no disorder whatever. The
applicants for relief were admitted three or four at
a time, and were treated with considerate kindness
by the committee. Each case was reported upon
specially by a medical officer, and cases in which
there was no such report were postponed until a
1 house-to-house visitation could be made. All the
committee were tradesmen living in the very heart
of the district, and they knew most of the applicants
for assistance. He (Sir Mordaunt) addressed a few
words to the committee on the necessity of a house-
to-house visitation, which they received with much
courtesy, and except that the house-to-house visi-
tations were not so systematic as they might be, he
believed the local authorities, aided by the Man-
sion-house grants, were doing an immense deal of
good and doing At in a workmanlike manner. They
had thrown themselves into the work from the com-
mencement of the visitation, and he believed by their
energy they had dene much to stamp out the disease
in that part of London.
Mr. JOHN ABEL SMITII, M.P., referred to a visit
he had paid on Monday to the auxiliary hospital for
cholera patients and convalescents recently estab-
lished in Commercial-street, Whitechapel, and which
is under the charge, principally, of Miss Sellon and
a band of Sisters of Mercy, acting in concert with a
committee of gentlemen, of whom Ur. E. IL Palmer,
a director of the Bank of England, and the Hon.
Mr. Wood, are members. Ile said the hospital was
opened on Monday or Tuesday week, and during
that time 55 cholera patients had been admitted.
On Monday last 32 of them remained in the hospi-
tal, 13 having died, or less than 20 per cent., which
was wonderfully small, and many were leaving in a
state of recovery. There were 14 paid nurses, 7
for the day and 7 night, and there were also 12
sisters, 6 for day and 6 for night, and two ladies,
friends of tlie Bishop of London, who spent the
whole of each day there. That was a state 'of
things unknown, he believed, in any other part of
London or anywhere else. Every patient had a nurse,
and there were, besides, several men who made
themselves almost as useful as the women. The pre-
liminary expenses amounted to nearly £9OO, a great
part of which has been subscribed by private friends
among themselves.
Mr. E. H. PALMER, who attended the committee
later in the day, took occasion to say that, in his
humble judgment, the institution, by separating the
sick from the healthy, was likely to prove a most
efficient instrument in arresting the progress of the
malady.
A local committee in St. George's-in-the-Fast re-
ported that from a grant made by the committee
they had relieved 136 cases. The total number of
attacks of cholera alone reported to the vestry, they
said, was 625, and the total number of deaths up to
a
Saturday last from cholera and diarrhoea,
reckoning those who had intlieL London without
h and
died
other hospitals, was 340. The disease was decreas-
ing in that part of London.
The committee made them a second grant of £lOO ;
they also voted to the Tower-hill district £5O, to
the Stepney Relief Society £25, being in both cases