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are principally indebted for their ways and means. For the first twenty-five years, the number of in-patients were largely in excess of the out-door patients, there being, during that period, 16, 588 of the former under treatment, to 13,009 of the latter. Down to 1861, rather more than halfa-million cases of accident, illness, &c., had been attended to, and to show the yearly increasing demand made upon the funds of the Hospital, it is only necessary to give a few later dates. In 1860 the in-patients numbered 2 850, the out-patients 20,584, and the expenditure was £4,191. In 1870, the total number of patients were 24,082, and the expenditure £12,207. The next three years showed an average of 28,007 patients, and a yearly expenditure of £13,900. During the last four years, the benefits of the Charity have been bestowed upon an even more rapidly-increasing scale, the number of cases in 1880 having been 30,785, in 1881 36,803, in 1882 44,623, and in 1883 41,551, the annual outlay now required being considerably over £20,000 per year. When the centenary of the Hospital was celebrated in 1879, a suggestion was made that an event so interesting in the history of the charity would be most fittingly commemorated by the establishnient of a Suburban Hospital, where patients whose diseases are of a chronic character could be treated with advantage to themselves, and with relief to the parent institution, which is always so pressed for room that many patients have to be sent out earlier than the medical officers like. The proposal was warmly taken up, but no feasible way of carrying it out occurred until October, 1883, when the committee of the Hospital had the pleasure of receiving a letter (dated Sept. 20), from Mr. John Jaffray, in which he stated that, having long felt the importance of having a Suburban Hospital, and with a desire to do some amount of good for the community in which, for many years, he had received so much kindness, and to which, in great measure, he owed his prosperity, he had secured a freehold site on which he proposed to erect a building, capable of accommodating fifty male and female patients, with the requisite offices for the attendants and servants, and offered the same as a free gift to the Governors, in trust for the public. This most welcome and munificent offer, it need hardly be said, was gratefully accepted, and a general appeal was made for funds to properly endow the "Jaffray Suburban Hospital," so that its maintenance and administration shall not detract from the extending usefulness of the parent institution. The site chosen by Mr. Jaffray is at Gravelly Hill, and it is estimated the new branch hospital, of which the first stone was laid June 4, 1884, will cost at least £15,000 in erection. Towards the endowment fund there have been nine or ten donations of £1,000 each promised, and it is hoped a fully sufficient amount will be raised before the building is completed, for, in the words of Mr. Jaffray, we "have great faith in the liberality of the public towards an institution—the oldest and noblest and ablest of our medical charities—which for more than a century has done so much for the relief of human suffering: and cannot help believing that there are in Birmingham many persons who, having benefited by the prosperity of the town, feel that they owe a duty to the community, and will gladly embrace this opportunity of discharging at least some part of their obligation." Patients are said to be admitted to the General Hospital by tickets from subscribers; but, in addition to accidents and cases of sudden illness, to which the doors are open at all hours, a large number of patients are admitted free on the recommendation of the medical officers, the proportion of the cases thus admitted being as six to ten with subscribers' tickets.