public meeting at which it was formed had been
called by the elder society, and prepared for
with a physician's pamphlet of their circulation.
A parliamentary committee reported the
evidence it had taken from Dr. Garthshore, Mr.
Bernard, and other workers at the Fever
Institution, as to the death of three thousand
persons a year from typhus within bills of
mortality, the inadequacy of the means of the Fever
Institution to cope with the evil, and its possession
of sixteen hundred pounds of its small means
only, on the condition of its getting parliamentary
support. Upon that report, on the motion of
Mr. Wilberforce, a grant of three thousand was
made, and after a due amount of friendly
confusion and doubt whether certain wordings gave
the money to the elder society or to its
offspring in Gray's Inn-lane, the money was held
in trust by the elder society, and an immediate
donation of three hundred pounds was contributed
by that society to the Institution out of
the funds received from government. It was
at the same time intimated to the committee of
the Fever Institution, that if they could find
ground in or near Gray's Inn-lane on which to
establish a better House of Recovery than the
one then in use, the elder society would pay
over the whole of its fund towards the purchase
and maintenance of the same.

In this sixth year of the Institution, the
number of patients admitted into the House of
Recovery was ninety-three, and there were two in
the house on the first of May when the account
began. Of the whole number of ninety-five,
fourteen were dead: eighty had gone out cured,
and one remained, the only patient at the date
of the report. And this, too, was a fuller year
than either of the two preceding it. In the
same year, among the London courts, thirty
rooms had been limewashed and fumigated,
many others being fumigated only.

It was at this time that active inquiry began
to be made for the more convenient house, which
was to be built or bought. In April, eighteen
hundred and nine, Mr. Mellish, member for
Middlesex, was being pressed as to the necessity of
getting ground—a piece near Clerkenwell Prison
being especially desired. The landlord of the
Fever House was urging that his adjacent garden
had become useless to him in consequence
of the opinion that there was danger in the air
of it, and, as it would grow its rent in
vegetables, it was rented by the Institution for eight
pounds a year. But the committee was not rich
in funds. A suggestion at a meeting in the
Tower Hamlets for the establishment of a House
of Recovery in the eastern district of London,
to be placed under the control of the Fever
Institution, could not be entertained unless East
London would yield a hundred new subscribers
likely to be permanent. The funds of the
Institution, with a subscription-list that had been
for several years declining, could not support
two houses. Eighteen hundred and nine was a
healthy year; and the number of typhus cases
(the only sort admissible) admitted into the
Fever House during the whole year, between
May and May, eighteen nine and ten, was only
thirty. In October, eighteen hundred and
eleven, ground and premises in Coldbath-fields,
including the bath-house and garden-ground in
the centre of Coldbath-square, about to be sold by
auction in three lots, were considered eligible,
and were bought by the Institution for three
thousand eight hundred and thirty pounds. But
the Society for Bettering the Condition of the
Poor, which held the money-bag, raised doubts
as to the propriety of buying all this ground.
The doubts were overcome, the purchase (with
a deduction of two hundred pounds for a
possible claim of public right of way through one
of the lots) was completed, and at the beginning
of the year eighteen fourteen the parliamentary
grant of three thousand pounds, with six
hundred pounds of the subscription money also held
in trust, was paid over to the Fever Institution.
There still remained two thousand pounds
applicable to the building of a new House of
Recovery; and an appeal might, on, such an
occasion, safely be made to the public for much
further increase of the building fund. Typhus had
just then been especially prevalent, and for ten
years the house in Constitution-row had never
been so full. Many cases of scarlet fever had
necessarily been denied admission; and it was
resolved that in the new house to be built in
the centre of Coldbath-square, a distinct provision
should be made for the reception of scarlet
fever cases. Meanwhile (in January, eighteen
fifteen), the Clerkenwell vestry resolved to
oppose to the uttermost the erection of a fever
house in Coldbath-square, "by reason of its
proximity to the parochial workhouse and the
House of Correction, and inasmuch as the
proposed site is a very populous and crowded
neighbourhood." St. Pancras, however, sent fifty
pounds towards the building fund. In the following
month, Sir Thomas Bernard, who had been the
most influential mover in all these arrangements,
stated that there was a disposition in some of
the governors of the hospitals for the small-pox,
for inoculation and vaccination, at King's-cross,
to appropriate their building next the
Hampstead-road, containing about eighty beds with
the furniture, to use as a fever house upon
moderate compensation, if the fever committee
was disposed to apply for it. The suggestion was
at once acted upon, the building was inspected,
and was considered, except for the want of a
kitchen, which could easily be added, remarkably
well suited to the object in view. So it came
to pass that for four thousand pounds, with the
payment of incidental charges and the cost of
building boundary walls, the western building
and garden of the old Small-pox Hospital
became converted into the London House of
Recovery, for the Cure and Prevention of
Infectious Fevers. The best was, of course, made
of the Coldbath-fields estate, which at this day
is yielding one hundred and fifty pounds a year
to the revenues of the institution. The House
of Recovery at King's-cross, opened for sixty
patients, but afterwards enlarged so that it
would hold twice that number, is the old Fever