London's Pulse: Medical Officer of Health reports 1848-1972
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Hints from the Health Department. Leaflet from the archive of the Society of Medical Officers of Health. Credit: Wellcome Collection, London
London County Council 1911
[Report of the Medical Officer of Health for London County Council]
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16
Annual Report of the London County Council, 1911.
During the complete years in which the notification of infectious diseases has been obligatory, the number of cases of smallpox (uncorrected for errors in diagnosis) notified to the medical officers of health in the various sanitary districts comprised in the Administrative County has been as follows :—
| Year. | Cases of smallpox notified. | Case-rate per 1,000 persons living. |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | 60 | 0.014 |
| 1891 | 114 | 0.027 |
| 1892 | 425 | 0.100 |
| 1893 | 2,815 | 0.653 |
| 1894 | 1,193 | 0.274 |
| 1895 | 980 | 0.223 |
| 1896 | 225 | 0.050 |
| 1897 | 104 | 0.023 |
| 1898 | 33 | 0.007 |
| 1899 | 29 | 0.006 |
| 1900 | 86 | 0.019 |
| 1901 | 1,700 | 0.375 |
| 1902 | 7,796 | 1.683 |
| 1903 | 416 | 0.091 |
| 1904 | 489 | 0.107 |
| 1905 | 74 | 0.016 |
| 1906 | 31 | 0.007 |
| 1907 | 8 | 0.002 |
| 1908 | 4 | 0.001 |
| 1909 | 21 | 0.005 |
| 1910 | 7 | 0.002 |
| 1911 | 72 | 0.016 |
It will be seen from the following table that in the quinquennium 1906-10 only two of the under mentioned towns, namely, Bristol and Hull, had a rate of 0.01 per 1,000, and that in 1911, deaths occurred in London and Birmingham only.
| Town. | 1906-10. | 1911. | Town. | 1906-10. | 1911. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bradford | — | — | |||
| Greater London | Hull | — | |||
| Liverpool | — | Newcastle-on-Tyne | — | ||
| Manchester | — | — | Nottingham | — | |
| Birmingham | — | 0.00 | Stoke-on-Trent | — | — |
| Sheffield | — | Portsmouth | — | — | |
| Leeds | — | — | Salford | — | — |
| Bristol | — | Leicester | — | — | |
| West Ham | — | — | — | — |
Smallpox
death-rates
in large
English
towns.
The following table shows that of the undermentioned towns, Paris, St. Petersburg and Vienna are the only towns which had an appreciable death-rate from smallpox during the last six years :—
| Town. | 1906-10. | 1911. | Town. | 1906-10. | 1911. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.00a | 0.00a | Stockholm | — | _ | |
| Paris | St. Petersburg | ||||
| Brussels | — | Berlin | |||
| Amsterdam | — | — | Vienna | — | |
| Copenhagen | — | — | New York |
Smallpox
death-rates
in foreign
towns.
Of the 72 cases of smallpox notified in London during 1911, 63 occurred during February and
March. Forty of these cases occurred in Stepney, where the outbreak originated. In his annual
report, Dr. Thomas mentions that the first case was that of an out-patient of the London Hospital
who was on February 5th removed to the Mile End Infirmary, suffering from an illness accompanied
by a rash. She was accommodated in a general ward, where there were 60 women and
children, but the true nature of the ailment was not discovered until February 20th, when
two other patients in the ward presented symptoms of smallpox. The next day four other
patients were removed to the smallpox hospital, two of them being from the same ward, and
on each day until February 28th, fresh cases were removed from the Infirmary, most of them
from the infected ward. Dr. Thomas states that his inquiries into the outbreak suggest, as the
Smallpox in
Loadon.
(a) See footnote (c), page 2.