typhus, or typhoid, or a severe form of scarlet
fever, the first impulse was—as it still is, and
ever must be—to remove and place in conditions
favourable to his own recovery, the individual,
as the centre from which infection would
be sure to spread; to purify or destroy his
clothes and bedding, and to apply hot limewash
to his walls. It was in this sense—true as far
as it goes—that the physicians of St. Bartholomew's,
Guy's, and the London Hospitals—of
the General, the Westminster General, the
Public, and the New Finsbury Dispensaries—
signed the professional certificate upon which
on May-day in the year eighteen hundred and
one, action was taken by a meeting of the
inhabitants of the metropolis, convened by public
advertisement from the Society for Bettering the
Condition of the Poor, and held at the Thatched-
House Tavern. After the reading of the medical
opinion, it was "Resolved—That it appears to
this meeting by the above certificate, that the
contagious malignant fever has been for some
time past, and now is, prevalent in the
metropolis, and that it has been occasioned by
individual infection, which, with proper care, might
have been immediately checked,—or has been
produced or renewed by the dwellings of the
poor not having been properly cleansed and
purified from contagion after the fever has been
prevalent in them: That it also appears that
this evil (the injury and danger of which
extends to every part of the metropolis) might be
prevented by cleansing and purifying the clothes,
furniture, and apartments of persons attacked
by this disease, and by removing them from
situations where, if they remain, the infection of
others is inevitable." Upon this ground it was
further resolved to set on foot a subscription for
forming an institution for checking the progress
of contagious malignant fever in the metropolis;
also, that a committee of five should be
appointed to draw up the plan and lay it, when
ready, before a meeting of subscribers to the
new institution.

In a month, the plan was ready to be laid
before the subscribers assembled at the Thatched-
House Tavern. "Houses of Recovery" were
to be provided for those whom it might be
thought necessary—as shown by an order from
the physician—to remove from their own
homes, and those houses were to be "in airy
situations, sufficiently detached from other
buildings, and in the neighbourhood of a
populous district of the town." The persons
so removed were to be conveyed at
the expense of the institution by "a chair
provided with a movable lining, or some other
means of conveyance kept at each house." The
infection of public conveyances by the use of
them for the removal of fever patients, was to
be thus avoided. The institution was to keep
also a stock of bedclothes and apparel to be lent
or given, under the direction of the committee,
to infected poor. The directors appointed to
conduct the affairs of each house might also
"order a reward to such amount (subject to the
regulations of the committee) as they might
think proper, to be given after the cessation of
fever, on condition that the rules prescribed for
cleanliness, ventilation, and the prevention of
infection, have been faithfully observed. The
reward to be proportioned to the degree of previous
danger, and the success of the measures by which
it had been counteracted." The ordinary
attendant physician was to be elected by ballot,
and to have no salary, but a yearly honorarium;
which, according to the state of the funds, was
in one year a hundred, in another fifty pounds.
There were to be two extraordinary physicians,
without any fee or reward. There was to be an
apothecary, resident near the house, attending
regularly once a day, and also at any time in
case of emergency, to compound: the institution
finding drugs. Each house was to have a matron
and nurses, with such domestic servants as might
be necessary; and a porter, part of whose duty
would be the conveyance of the sick. These
preliminaries settled, officers were elected. The
suggestion since acted upon was at once thrown
out by Lord Sheffield, who proposed an "inquiry
whether parishes would agree to pay a limited
sum annually to entitle them to send a limited
number of persons infected with contagious
fever to the several houses of reception which
might be established."

Search was then made by energetic promoters
of the institution for a house that might be
fitted up as the first "House of Reception." A
house in Acton-street, Gray's Inn-lane, was only
unsuitable because it was a part of property in
Chancery; but No. 2, Constitution-row, Gray's
Inn-lane, was taken. The committee having thus
got possession of its house, and being ready to
work out its plan, studied with care the last
report of the House of Recovery at Manchester,
as well as the last report of that at Waterford.

The new house in Gray's Inn-lane was but a
stone's throw from the rejected house in Acton-
street. At that time, and for some years later,
Gray's Inn-lane, north of Guildford-street, was
utterly unlike what it is now. At Guildford-
street, the houses stopped; St. Andrew's burial-
ground on one side of the way, and, on the other
side, more removed from the road, the burial-
ground of Bloomsbury and St. George's, lay
among fields and gardens. The Blue Lion Inn,
on one side of St. Andrew's burial-ground, and
the Welsh Charity School, standing in grounds
of its own, on the other, were the only buildings
in the green lane between Guildford-street
and Constitution-row. From the bottom of
Acton-street, then a very short street, which
ran out of Constitution-row on the right-hand
side, and led into fields, one might walk over
fields without passing a single house, to
Sadler's Wells, and thence on across the thin
and airy slip of the houses of Islington; but
otherwise still over fields without touching
a house, except the thinly scattered line of
detached villas in the City gardens, all the
way to Hoxton. In those days even the London
Hospital, now blocked in by a dense
district of East London, had hardly a house