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In May, five cases occurred in a house in Wandsworth Bridge
Road, the source of the disease being a girl living in the same
house, who had had an attack of what was supposed to be
Chicken - pox. This girl had been employed in a laundry in
Chiswick, to which had been sent the linen from a house in
Westminster in which a valet had died from what was supposed
to be Malignant Measles. From this case in Westminster, the
following cases were ascertained to have arisen: —
1. —The widow of the man, who, after her husband's death, was
removed to St. George Infirmary, remaining there 3 days, where a
nurse who had attended her was infected by her clothing. She
then stayed for two nights in a house in Kensington where two
children were infected, and then went to Chelsea where she was
seen by the Medical Officer of Health and removed to the Smallpox
Hospital.
2. —The son of the first patient, who resided in a Midland
town, attended his father's funeral, and, after his return home,
was attacked with the disease, which was not diagnosed, and gave
rise to three other cases.
3. —A housekeeper in the same block of flats in which the
valet died, who had visited him when ill, was removed to St.
Mary's Hospital with Pneumonia, subsequently developed Smallpox
and infected two nurses, a patient, and two students at the
hospital.
4. —Four girls, including the one living in Wandsworth Bridge
Road, who were employed in the sorting-room at the Chiswick
Laundry, were attacked, the disease being at first supposed to be
Chicken-pox, from whom, in all, eight other cases resulted.
In November, a girl living in Bayonne Road was found to
be suffering from a mild attack of Small-pox, which had been
regarded as Chicken-pox. This girl had been employed in a house
in Chelsea, and had been most probably infected, together with a
fellow servant occupying the same bedroom, by the master of the
house, who. after his return from Paris in October, had an illness
which had been looked upon as Influenza,