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matter, and may, therefore, be the result, and not the cause, of death.
A definite expert opinion from the Ministry of Health on the subject is
needed.
(NIB.—The above report on a suspected case of food poisoning should
have been included in the 1924 Annual Report of the Medical Officer of
Health, but was not so included pending further investigations).
(b) Outbreak of Food Poisoning in South Lambeth.
The Medical Officer of Health's attention was drawn to three cases
of illness in a house in South Lambeth, which appeared to be caused,
in the opinion of the medical practitioner in attendance, by infected
food.
The shop from which the suspected food had been obtained was
visited, and enquiries made throughout the immediate district, with the
result that 26 more cases of similar illnesses were discovered in connection
with the persons who had partaken of the same consignment of
food, making a total of 29 cases in all (as far as could be discovered).
The history was gone into in connection with each individual case, and
suspicion pointed to infected pork and beef—15 patients having partaken
of beef, 2 of pork, and 3 of both beef and pork. Of the 29
persons affected, 26 were adults over 15 years of age, and 3 were children
under 15 years of age (4, 6, and 11 years respectively). The 29
infected persons lived at 10 separate houses in the neighbourhood.
The cases occurred during May, 1925.
On inspecting the shop from which the pork and beef had been
purchased, it was found that the business was that of a retail butcher,
who also, for the convenience of some of his customers, is accustomed
to boil, on his premises, joints of salted beef and joints of salted pork,
which are afterwards boned and trimmed and pressed between layers of
gelatine, selling the same in small portions across the counter. The
illnesses have been traced by evidence to boiled pressed salt pork
and beef prepared on the 13th May, 1925, and it is found that, whilst
the shop, as a retail butcher's, leaves nothing to be desired in the way
it is conducted, the conditions under which the boiling, trimming, and
pressing of the salt beef and pork take place were, at the time of
inspection, found to be unsatisfactory, the boiling being carried out in
a portable copper in a small yard at the rear of the premises in close
proximity to a w.c., to a large and fixed dirty dust receptacle or ashpit,
and to two large fat and trimmings and other refuse cupboards, equally
dirty, which have been built in the yard and are constructed of brick,
with wooden doors, open at the tops and bottoms. Large numbers of
flies (chiefly of the bluebottle type) were noticed to be passing freely
from the insides of the cupboards to the dust receptacle or ashpit,
and from the dust receptacle or ashpit to the insides of the cupboards,
as was to be expected, having regard to the fact that such cupboards
contained trimmings of fat and meat waiting for removal by the