OLD SMALLPOX HOSPITAL
WILL BE DESTROYED BY FIRE.
Abandoned Structure Is Full of
Germs of Deadly Contagious
Diseases.
St. George's contagious disease hospital, located on the banks of the Missouri near the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul railroad bridge, is to be destroyed by fire by orders of the health and hospital board. It is a frame structure, and it is proposed to have the fire company stationed in the East Bottoms preside over the conflagration. The building was erected several years ago, and the board decided that it would never do to use the wreckage for building purposes again on account of fear of a spread of contagion. Hundreds of persons have been treated there for smallpox and other contagious diseases.
The floods of last spring overreached the banks, and moved the building off its foundations onto the land claimed by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad company. Ever since then the hospital has been out of commission and the railroad company has been persistent in its demands that the structure be removed.
Reports current in the Eleventh ward, in which the old general hospital building and annexes are located, that smallpox patients are kept in the annexes are denied by W. P. Motley, a member of the health and hospital board.
"The stories have been traced down to employes who were discharged from the old hospital," said Mr. Motley last night. "We have been told that the previous administration kept smallpox patients in the annexes, but no such conditions have prevailed since the present board has been organized.
Mr. Motley was asked where the city would keep smallpox patients in the future. He replied that he could not answer the question, but that it would be taken up at the next meeting of the board.
A year or so ago, during the Beardsley administration, a movement was started to establish a contagious disease hospital on the grounds of the old hospital, but it was given up on account of protests from Eleventh ward residents.
