'Between September 21st and 27th I was visiting workhouses and infirmaries every day, and on the 27th I completed my visits to every workhouse, infirmary, and poor-law school in or belonging to Metropolitan Unions.] 'My chief new departure was in connection with the emigration of pauper children, which had been long virtually prohibited, and which I once more authorized.' Mr. Preston Thomas has fortunately preserved a note of another innovation. The Guardians of a certain union in Cambridgeshire had committed the offence of spending three shillings and threepence of public money on toys for sick pauper children in the workhouse infirmary. The case had occurred before, and the Board's legal advisers had held the expenditure to be unwarrantable, and had surcharged the offending Guardians. Dilke was questioned in the House about the matter, and admitted the previous decisions, but said that the Board had changed its mind. So the children at Wisbech kept their toys; and not only that, but a circular went out from Whitehall suggesting that workhouse girls should be supplied with a reasonable number of skipping-ropes and battledores and shuttlecocks. The appearance of cholera in French and Spanish ports disquieted the public, and as early as July 25th, 1883, 'I circulated a draft of a Bill to meet the cholera scare, which I carried into law as the Diseases Prevention Act. I did not much believe in cholera, but I took advantage of the scare to carry some useful clauses to deal with smallpox epidemics, the most important clause being one giving compulsory powers for acquiring wharves, by which we could clear the London smallpox hospitals, removing the patients to the Atlas and Castalia floating hospitals on the Thames. I was a strong partisan of the floating hospitals for smallpox. I used to pay frequent visits to them, and in the early summer of 1885 stayed there from Saturday to Monday; and I used also to go to the camp at Darenth to which we removed convalescents from the ships.' He notes that he was revaccinated before one of these visits: 'September, 1884.--My arm was in a frightful condition from the vaccine disease, though I was still a teetotaller, now of about ten years' standing.' During the autumn recess: 'In the course of this week I was every day inspecting schools and asylums, the imbecile asylums at Caterham, Leavesden, and many others; and my smallpox wharves were also giving me much trouble, as Rotherhithe and the other places showed strong objections to them, which I was, however, able to remove.'