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126
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1911.
2,570, a number, as shown in Fig. 7, considerably exceeded in each alternate year of the nineties,
viz., in 1890. 1892, 1894, 1896, and 1898. As regards mortality, the outbreak was not in any sense a
record, indeed it just touches the mean mortality for the years 1841-1900. So far as incidence of cases
is concerned, the numbers have not been precedented since the annual record has been fully kept for
school cases.
For 15 months previous to October, 1910, measles deaths had fallen to an average of 22.6 per
week, against 38 weekly for the decennium 1900-1910, and 44 weekly for the Nineties, and 50 for the
Eighties.
During the summer and early autumn of 1910 a prevalence of German measles complicated the
school observation which has always been maintained in recent years. With the autumnal rise in
October, 1910, an increase in the case notifications coincided with an increased death rate. True measles
was therefore in excess of the average, creeping about London, and raising the average weekly measles
mortality to 86 for the next four months. In March, 1911, there was a sudden increase to a weekly
average of 169, declining to 95 for April, and remaining below the normal since. The epidemic ceased
more suddenly than it had begun. The margin of susceptible cases was reduced to between 15 and 20
per cent, of the children in the schools, averaging 18.4 per cent.
In 1911 the weekly mortality from the beginning of September averaged 8 ; whilst the mean
weekly incidence of the same period among school children was 61. These figures are much below the
normal for the month. Figure 6 shows the progress of the epidemic in numbers of deaths weekly
by the continuous line ; the dotted line giving the ten years' averages.
Figure 6. London. Weekly mortality from measles during 1910-11 outbreak, and averages for 1900-10.