Metropolitan Asylums Board

The Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 was passed following multiple campaigns to improve the medical and nursing care for sick paupers, by: the health section of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science; the Workhouse Visiting Society; the Poor Law Medical Reform Association; Florence Nightingale enlisting multiple influential supporters such as Edwin Chadwick; the Lancet and the British Medical Association. In September 1866, the President of the Poor Law Board, Mr Gathorne Hardy, instructed two doctors, Dr W. O. Markham and Mr Uvedale Corbett, to visit all of London workhouses with a view to procuring information which might assist him in drafting new legislation for the reform of workhouse infirmaries. == The first decades of Metropolitan Asylums Board ==

The Metropolitan Poor Act 1867 (30 & 31 Vict. c. 6) instructed that all unions and parishes across London were combined for the reception and relief of the poor suffering from fever, smallpox or insanity under the Metropolitan Asylums District and its board of management. The MAB responsibilities were extended to cover people with cholera (1883); diphtheria (both pauper and non pauper,1888), Poor Law children and children with ringworm and opthalmia (1897), poor law boys training for sea service (1875). == The Metropolitan Asylums Board in the 20th century ==

By 1900 the MAB was responsible for 2,486 beds in smallpox hospitals in country areas and 6,108 beds in fever hospitals in London. Dr C. Worster-Drought, MA, MD, MRCP, MRCS. Consulting Physician in 1930 at the Metropolitan Asylums Board hospitals The MAB's responsibilities were enlarged to include care of people with: measles (1911), puerperal fever(1912), trench fever, malaria, dysentry (1919), with tuberculosis but uninsured under the National Insurance Act 1911, venereal disease (women and girls)1919, sane epileptics who were paupers (1916), and women with carcinoma of the uterus (1928). At the time of transfer there were 38 hospitals and colonies providing 22,572 beds. The largest number of beds were for the treatment of the mentally disordered and feeble minded (9,387), and the isolation and treatment of fever diseases (8,421). ==See also==