A most hopeful sign was the greater public interest taken in matters pertaining to the public health. The Medical Officer of Health for Islington wrote in 1892:-- "With the advance of education the public and Parliament appreciate the importance of more and more safeguarding the public health." In 1895:-- "They (middle class) will not tolerate the sanitation of a few years ago; indeed, they expect that the houses they live in will at least be rendered safe against the entrance of sewer gas, and themselves safeguarded against infectious disease." And the Medical Officer of Health for the "City" in 1894:-- "Attention has been more particularly directed to premises and dwellings of the better class, the occupants of which are becoming more and more exacting owing to the increased knowledge acquired by the public on all sanitary questions. Some of these premises are of great size and employ many hundreds of persons, and many enormous insurance, banking, and gigantic commercial establishments." And that there is a community of interest in a healthy London was becoming more widely realised. That the fact should have taken so long to be grasped is extraordinary as it was so manifest a one. Over and over again it had been proved that disease was not restrained by the paper boundaries of parishes, and that once set alight anywhere no limit could be put to its widespread devastations. An unhealthy area in any part of the metropolis constituted a danger to the whole. Nor was disease a respecter of classes. All were interested in keeping it away. And, after many painful lessons, people were realising much more than formerly that disease was a most costly infliction. The Medical Officer of Health for St. James', Westminster, in his report for 1893, set out the business aspect of it:-- "The position of St. James', as the shopping centre for the best retail trade of the West-end of London, makes the district more and more a city of luxurious shops, hotels, clubs, and lodging-houses. Increasing facilities for travel to the suburbs, and the increasing value of premises, necessitate its utilisation for business purposes during the day, and its comparative desertion at night.... Its resident population of 25,000 persons is therefore an inadequate exponent of the activity of its daily life, of the importance of its retail trade, and of the necessity for active sanitation. An outbreak of smallpox or of cholera would at once so damage the trade of the district as to inflict upon its ratepayers a thousand times the cost which is now incurred by their preventive sanitary service, and by the prompt removal of infectious cases to suburban hospitals as is now done." But that was only a single and a limited case.