In the years 1884 and 1885 the hospitals demonstrated their great utility. There was a severe epidemic of smallpox. From its outbreak in 1884, to its subsidence in the autumn of 1885, no less a number than 12,425 patients passed through the hospitals, hospital ships, and camps of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, and the arrangements for the removal to hospital of cases of infectious disease, from the whole of the metropolis, worked smoothly and satisfactorily. The gain to the community in thus removing infectious cases from its midst was immeasurable.[165] In 1885 the Report of the Royal Commission which had been inquiring into the Housing of the Working Classes was published. It presented to the general public a mass of facts of which previously they had taken but little heed, and the vast importance of which they had utterly failed to realise; and it brought into the forefront of social questions the vital question of the public health, and the imperative necessity of remedying evils which were eating into the very vitals of the community. The Royal Commissioners depicted the widely prevalent and dreadful overcrowding which existed, and which in certain localities was becoming more serious than ever, and they gave numerous instances of it. They described the fearsome condition of tenement-houses, and of the people living therein--the inadequacy of the water supply--the defective sanitary accommodation in houses--the lack of air space--the absence of ventilation--the use of cellars and underground rooms as dwelling-places--the limitless filth. And they pointed out the dreadful results of this condition of things--physical, moral, and material--the prevalence of disease, the heavy death-rate, the destruction of bodily health, the dreadful immorality resulting from overcrowding, the degradation to which masses were doomed, the incitement to drink, and depravity, and crime. They declared that:-- "Even statistics of actual disease consequent on overcrowding would not convey the whole truth as to the loss of health caused by it to the labouring classes.... "Nothing stronger could be said in describing the effect of overcrowding than that it is even more destructive to general health than conducive to the spread of epidemic and contagious diseases." And they pointed out that there was much legislation designed to meet these evils, yet that the existing laws were not put in force, some of them having remained a dead letter from the date when they first found place in the statute book. And they investigated the causes of many of these things--and they assigned the blame for some of them--and they passed in review the conduct of the local governing authorities--and they recapitulated the existing laws upon these various matters, and suggested certain alterations, and made various valuable recommendations.