The patients consist for the most part of unmarried women.[17] They are admitted into the pregnant wards, where they remain for a varying interval of from days to months, from whence they are removed to the delivery ward; about a fifth part of the women are admitted directly from the town to the delivery ward. They remain on an average eight hours in the delivery room, whence they are removed to the lying-in ward, where they remain five or six days. They are then admitted to the convalescent ward, and are finally discharged fourteen days after labour, one half to the town, the other half into other parts of the workhouse. An important part of the management is that the inmates of the pregnant wards only inhabit those wards at night, being engaged during the day in various occupations within the workhouse, but not about the lying-in women, as in the Paris Maternité. Cases are not taken into the lying-in division unless labour has begun, or is supposed to be imminent. Any case of illness occurring in the lying-in department is at once removed to the ‘class sick nursery,’ to the lock or other division. The nurses engaged in the lying-in division attend also cases in the ‘class sick nursery,’ and are periodically changed. Any case which they cannot manage is referred to the resident medical officer on duty. There are three of these officers, who relieve each other every eight hours day and night. The officer on duty is liable to be called on to visit any part of the workhouse or hospital during his turn of duty, so that it might happen occasionally that the medical officer might be called from the hospital to the lying-in division. If feverish symptoms show themselves in any patient in the lying-in division, the practice is to isolate the case or to transfer it to some other division of the workhouse. The ward is then closed, fumigated, cleansed, and lime-washed, before being again used. This proceeding has only been necessary twice within the last four years. Until recently, the whole of the deliveries, which amounted to an average of about 500 a year, were under the charge of one paid officer and a pauper who, without any payment or extra diet, delivered nearly every case and worked both night and day. There are several points in this procedure which are of great importance, as bearing on the general question of successful management of lying-in establishments:— 1. The building, although situated in a large commercial town, is on a high, isolated, and freely ventilated locality. 2. It is not connected with a general hospital or medical school, or with any of their risks. 3. There is a constant change of wards:—pregnant ward, delivery ward, lying-in ward, recovery ward, body of the house. There is, in short, as little risk as possible of the cumulative blood-poisoning process already referred to. 4. Frequent cleansing and lime-washing.