View report page

Sixteen patients were males and seventeen females.
Twenty-eight patients had been vaccinated in infancy, and five
were unvaccinated.
Most of the cases occurred in groups, each group
consisting of a number of patients who contracted the disease
directly or indirectly from a common source of infection.
Group I.—Nos. 1 and 2, who were not Battersea residents,
were infected probably at Kingston in a common lodging
house. They tramped together to Battersea, where they
stayed at a common lodging house in Surrey Lane, and where
first one and then the other was taken ill. These were the
only two cases which occurred amongst the inhabitants of
common lodging houses, and, so far as is known, no other
cases were infected by them.
Group II.—No. 4 had recently returned from Dublin,
where he had been employed in the erection of additional
hospital accommodation for Small-pox patients, the disease
being at that time prevalent in Dublin. He had been
vaccinated in infancy, but had refused re-vaccination. Nos.
7, 8, and 11, all of whom were relatives of his, contracted
the disease from No. 4.
Group III.—This group consists of No. 5 and Nos. 12
and 13, who were infected by No. 5. The source of infection
in the latter case could not be traced, but as the patient spent
the fifteenth day before the appearance of the rash in another
part of London, it is probable that she was not infected in
Battersea.
Group IV. —No. 9 was a coachman employed by a medical
practitioner. His master reported him as a suspicious case to
the Medical Officer of Health, who, on visiting the premises,
ascertained that the patient's wife, No. 10, was also suffering
from Small-pox. She had been taken ill a fortnight before,
and had been treated by her husband's employer for Chickenpox.